#204 Family Travel is an Investment in the Development of Yourself & Your Children + Logistics, Tips & FAQs

Rachel Denning (00:10.67)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast and welcome to a new year.

We are keeping the Denning family dream alive with family adventures. In December, we traveled through New York City, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia. And currently I'm recording this from Riga, Latvia. We've had some questions about the logistics of traveling with a family, which we're gonna discuss in this episode. How do we do it? What do we do with our stuff? How do we make it work?

We also get philosophical, of course, and talk about how travel has been a tool for helping us and our children to become assets instead of just having assets. We explain why we believe that travel is one of the non -negotiables for becoming well -educated. Warren Buffett once said that the very best investment you can make is into yourself. This episode explains how travel is an investment into the development of yourself and your children.

And along the way we give tips, strategies, and answer questions about how we have done it with seven children during the past 16 years to 50 countries on five continents. If you're interested in learning more about creating an extraordinary family life, then make sure to sign up for our Extraordinary Family Life Formula membership. It includes 250 hours of video content and training from Greg and Rachel Denning on marriage, parenting, family culture, lifestyle design, mastering and earning more money.

and so much more. It also includes meeting live with us once a month for an hour. Click the link in the show notes for a special discount. If you enjoy this episode or any of our episodes, would you please do us a favor and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or at our website, podcast .extraordinaryfamilylife .com. When you leave us a rating and a review, it helps to make this world a better place by getting this podcast into the ears of more parents.

Rachel Denning (02:09.838)
Parents are the molders and shapers of the future generations. We all need all the help we can get to be the best people and the best parents we can. Families with thriving parents raise thriving children who grow up to have a positive impact on their own families and communities, which leads to better nations and a better world. So you can have an impact by taking a minute to share the podcast with someone who will benefit from it and by leaving a rating or review.

and make sure to follow us on Instagram if you're not already. You can find us at WorldSchoolFamily or at greg .denny. Thank you so much for listening.

Rachel Denning (02:52.718)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your hosts, Greg and Rachel Denning, and we are bringing this party straight from Riga, Latvia. I'm trying to make sure I get my countries right and cities right, because we have been on a whirlwind. Because yesterday we were in Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn, Estonia, which is now one of our new favorite cities. It was amazing.

Absolutely incredible. Celebrated New Year's there. Had a view right out the hotel window of the church steeple and the fireworks going off at midnight. It was awesome. I loved it. It was super special. Before that we were in Finland. Finland. Three different cities. Which was maybe a little too much for Finland.

It was super cool. Helsinki was cool. And then we were in the Åland Islands before that. A few hours. And had a total fiasco, which happens. Very disappointing. It was not great. But that happens. You go out traveling and you lay out all these plans and some of them are bound to be bleh. The plans worked out fine. They just weren't great plans because it ended up being an unnecessary stop that...

resulted in...

It just didn't work out. But we've been in the Åland Islands in the middle of winter, freezing but cold. And then before that, we were in Stockholm, Sweden, which is also one of my new favorite cities. It was actually too short. We only spent one night there. Yeah, we should have spent a lot more time there because there was so much. Before that, we were in Copenhagen, Denmark for two nights, which was cool and interesting and unique. And then before that, of course, we spent

Rachel Denning (04:40.176)
weeks in Norway which is now a new favorite. Wow by far for the whole family we just want to go back love love love Norway and we even went up to Tromso.

which is about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. 225. Okay, 225. And wow. What a great place. Wow, what a bucket list place and bucket list adventures and activities, including many of you have seen and heard we did some polar plunges up there, jumping in that water and it was 13 degrees outside and we... Dog sledding. Dog sled, reindeer. Reindeer. Wow, man. It was a really cool place. Did a nighttime cruise to go see

the Northern Lights and got to see a little green zipper across the sky. It was awesome. And definitely a place I want to go back to again. In fact, I mean we've been talking about going back this summer. We loved it so much and I think I definitely want to do another trip there again. It's the different, the people were friendly. The whole country, the people, everything. I'm gonna do a podcast on the Be A Man podcast about the contrast that was so palpable going from New York City to Norway.

the, it was such a contrast, such a difference. And there was a lot to be learned from it. I'm going to do another podcast, but anyways, we're, we're over here, um, keeping the Denning family dream alive of traveling, um, extensively. We love it. We absolutely love it. Been out for weeks and we're, we still have many months to go. Uh, we're out for a long, another long adventure. We do these often, these multi -months.

adventures this one's gonna be it keeps getting extended it's really big at this point we have a trip planned for sure in to Scotland in the summertime

Rachel Denning (06:36.526)
And then maybe after that we will go to Portugal and actually set up our home base, but we'll see. But in between there we're leading trips. So if you guys, we hope some of you will come out and join us. We're leading trips to Istanbul, Turkey. We're leading trip to Jerusalem and to Jordan. Maybe Egypt is on there. I want to go to Oman.

I think it's going to be too hot by the time we go through the door. Even if it's hot, we've got to go to Oman. But we're doing a trip, we're leading a trip to Scotland. That one's getting pretty full. That one's almost full actually. That's probably full already. That's going to be epic. But you guys, we're out having adventures and whether or not your family dream or adventure is to travel, we hope that...

by hearing our story of going out and doing it, it inspires you to live your family dream, whatever that looks like. So it doesn't have to look like ours, but we wanna share the message of go follow your dream. I do wanna throw this in there though. We went through these phases, very early on we started traveling. We were like, man, this is great, everybody should travel. And it was interesting how much kickback we got. I mean, people would...

Veminently adamantly like travels not for everyone. No, you want young so I'm like, whoa, geez I figured everyone wanted to travel and so we backed off for a while and and I you know, I didn't I didn't openly Boldly say you should get out and travel. I've come back now to Because of the growth I'm just we're talking about today We're talking about we're gonna cover some logistics today for you guys answer a lot of questions because a bunch of you're like, yeah I want to do things like this. How do we do it? But we're also gonna cover the big philosophy of why why?

this kind of investing or unconventional methods of investing in yourself and your children. But I do want to say boldly without reservation you need to get out and travel and you get your kids out and travel because there are things that can only be learned through travel. Well and I'm glad you said that because I actually was going to say that.

Rachel Denning (08:44.877)
when you are saying that not everyone needs to live our dream and that's true, not everyone needs to do these big long -term travel or full -time travel experiences, but everyone, as you said, we've come to this conclusion, everyone does need to travel. I just, at this point, I think we believe that is one of the non -negotiables of becoming well -educated because there's so much you learn and experience and you have this...

widening of the mind that can't be accomplished in any other way. Even for me. I mean, I feel like I'm a fairly seasoned traveler. You too, as well. You know, you've now been to 50 countries. I'm almost to 50. Our six -year -old today crossed off her 25th country, you know, and she's all excited about it. But I come to a place like Latvia that's never been really on my radar.

And there's a whole history of life here. I mean, there are people who have lived their entire lives here. Very long history. Thousands of years. Yeah, people that have been living here for thousands of years. And what that does to my brain to try to contemplate, wow, here's a whole swath of history and people that you've never even thought about. Exactly. And they have an entire...

world that exists that you don't even, you know nothing about. It just, it suddenly feels like, wow, there's a whole gap in my mind that I didn't even know about. My son Kimball and I rented scooters this morning. We're cruising around Riga. Looking for laundry. For a final laundry mat and it worked out perfectly. And so we had the scooters and they were 18 cents a minute. So we're like, let's bomb these babies. And so we're just riding all. So I went on a long run this morning. I spent an hour running all through Riga. That's how I, that's how I, okay, there's a legit.

Right there. That's how I find my way around and find things and explore and learn things very quickly as soon as I get on the island I go running and I just run all over the place. Either that day or the next morning. Well, or I'm planning on running every morning while we're here because you can just run in different directions and so I'll go see the bridges and the statues and the buildings and I'll run past them and then take the family back. We gotta check out this church. We gotta check out this building. Oh, that's the coolest street and the coolest shops. High school. Plus you figure out where the grocery stores are, the laundromat. It's a vast way to do that.

Rachel Denning (11:08.143)
So fast and it's fun for me and I talk to people, meet people. It's amazing what you see in the mornings. But Kim and I were out cruising on our scooters. We went on different routes. So I did my running route this morning. Then I'm like, you know, on the scooters, I'm like, ooh, I want to take different route on this road, in this street, in this alley. And we're just booking pass and I fly past this old funky looking church. And I'm just, you know, dodging people and animals and ice and all this stuff. And I look up and on top of the church, it says 1334. 1330.

for.

And Riga Latvia had never been on our radar. Like you're saying, we just hadn't thought through that. And yet the history here is just phenomenal. And we were riding on the trolleys through town last night and I'm just, I was looking at the people and very, very few people speak English here. This has been interesting where in Scandinavia, man, they like the Norwegians all speak perfect English. It's beautiful. But here I'm like, and here they are. They're living out their whole lives and in their, their language.

He says it's it's Latvian is primary Russian is secondary and then some people speak English or another third language So again just fascinating right you learn so much and so today we wanted to walk through the importance of investing Unconventionally in yourself and your children and then some some very

real specifics of like, well, what do you do with your stuff? And what do you take with you? And how do you figure out like, online storage of your like data and work and things like that? These are some of the questions we've got. So I guess the mix, we'll kind of mix it in and out of philosophy and strategy. I guess we'll start though with something we've said before and kind of a life philosophy we took on ourselves early on.

Rachel Denning (13:04.781)
It was Warren Buffett. He's one of the greatest investors of all time. He said, people were asking him what to invest in and he said, well, I'll give you the top three. He says the very first thing, the most important investment you could ever make is in yourself. Number one, hands down, which is so profound. Number two, and I'll come back to that real quick. Number two, he said, invest in your own business.

You want to have your business growing, thriving. And then number three, invest in other people's businesses. And that would then begin to include stocks, bonds, options, real estate, all that other stuff. But I think it's significant that you say the first thing you invest in is yourself. And here's one of the fundamental reasons why. And Rachel was talking about this before the podcast. I'm sure you'll go into it, but.

That's when you invest in yourself and this includes investing in children. That's something that can't be lost. It can't be lost in a fire. Well, unless you get burned, I guess. There it goes. I mean, if your house burns down, if you spend all this time investing in nice things and then it burns to the ground. Like we have some friends two years ago, a fire went through their neighborhood, just random freaky fire and just burned to the ground. Everything. They lost everything. Gone.

or businesses. Businesses have been built up and or real estate right gone. I mean it gets destroyed whether it's in a hurricane or a flood or a bad army a war whatever it's gone. But what what you put into your mind

and your character and your soul cannot be taken from you. And in fact, it's taken with you wherever you go. Wherever you go, whatever happens. And so these guys, you read great biographies and autobiographies about very extremely successful people. And most of them had one, two, or three bankruptcies on the way to their wealth. They had epic failures. These guys, we look at them like, oh man, they're so good at business. He's like, well yeah, I learned how to be really good at business because I think

Rachel Denning (15:11.183)
So miserably with big businesses, right? They just got out of hand out of control. I lost them whatever it was and so they list the hard way, but he says what you know what? With the business dies or whatever you still have what you know And like Brian Tracy always used to say he's like your number one asset is your own earning ability

Because if you lose everything, you still have the knowledge and the skills and the context to start over, to rebuild it, to get it back. So truly, truly, the best investment you could ever make is in yourself and in your children, right? Now, obviously children, the best investment they make in themselves, but they don't know that yet. So it's your job as a parent to invest in them. Now, traditionally that meant school.

Right, well, and this is how this comes up and connects here, which is fascinating, because Greg was coaching a client the other day in a different country. I don't know what country we were in, but I was listening because I was in the hotel room, and so I could hear your side of it. You had headphones on. And you were talking about, it was another family that is actually out traveling.

because it was something they want to do as well. And they were talking about this concern of feeling like, what about investing in say my kid's education, my kid's future, you know, maybe their college account or investing in these more traditional ways. And in traditional assets. In traditional, exactly. And you were having this conversation of like, yeah, that's important. And you kind of went through the Warren Buffett thing there and emphasize that you are actually investing in yourself and in your

children by investing in experiences and exposure, right? Like we talk about all the time. And it was especially impactful for me to hear that, you know, as kind of this third party listening.

Rachel Denning (17:12.141)
because I realized that that is something, we didn't know we were doing that per se. I mean, we kind of maybe thought that that's what we were doing, but we didn't fully understand it and we didn't fully grasp the enormity of it when we started doing it especially. But now, having been doing it,

having done it for so many years. For those of you who might be new, we started traveling pretty full time in 2007 as a family. Right, so it's been like 16, 17 years, something like that. And we started when our oldest child was four, she's now 20. And then we have our other kids that are 18, 17, almost 16. And so we're starting to see the payoffs from this.

unconventional approach.

from our perspective and from outside opinions that we receive, I mean the payoffs are pretty good. They're extremely palpable and real in tons of ways, including financial ways, which was insightful to us. Yes. But what it is, it's essentially that we took this different approach and the fascinating thing about it is when I had our oldest children, they were still probably 18 months. Our oldest was 18 months, our second was

a baby and I started to think, oh I need to invest.

Rachel Denning (18:41.901)
in their college education. I need to save, you know, I need to start a fund where I invest in that so they can go to college. And this to me at the time was a new thing because I, you know, I went to a little bit of college but I paid for it myself. My parents had never done that. I paid my own way. You paid your own way. You've got some scholarships. I was the first one in my family to go get a degree and I paid my own way. You were the first one in my family, you know. Yep, yep. To have a degree. So college, that was kind of a, you know, save for college. That was kind of a new thing.

idea and I thought I'm gonna do this you know this is gonna be different it's gonna be new I'm gonna invest in college for our kids and so it's hard which is a cool fun idea you're we're brand new parents oh yeah cute little babies yeah like in in

18 years they're going to want to go to university. Let's start saving now so we can pay for university. And so that's what I set out to learn about because I knew nothing about that. And who would have known that 18 years later universities are becoming obsolete? That's another topic. We're not going to get into that topic today.

So I started reading these books and what's so fascinating to me is that reading these books about investing, like I was trying to learn what's the best way to do this, like what's the best way to save for my kids' future, right? It led me to expanding my mind and to learn and realize that there was more to life than I knew, that I was aware of. And that took us down this whole other path that led to us,

by the time this 18 month old was four, we sold everything, we moved, we drove to Costa Rica to live there. We went on this whole other journey that started as a result of that impulse. I want to invest in my kids. And so then come full circle here now, you are having this conversation with your client saying, we ended up investing in our kids in a different way. Our kids don't have a college fund.

Rachel Denning (20:44.717)
But we ended up investing in the development of their mind and soul and body through countless experiences over the past 15, 17 years. And this was what you emphasized, it made them an asset. It made us assets. It wasn't just them, of course, it developed us. And if there's any knowledge or wisdom that we happen to have, if we have any,

most of it has come from experiential learning that we've had through extensive travel.

Combined, I think, with our voracious hunger for learning and our curiosity and our commitment to reading, you know, our whole marriage started on reading and we've been devouring, both of us have been devouring books since before we met each other even. And, you know, I've maintained averaging a book a week for well over two decades. And when you combine the phenomenal book learning with the experiential learning of travel and the exposure,

So it's an exposure to ideas and concepts in books and an exposure to people and places and ideas and history and architecture and on and on and on through travel. So you get the best of both worlds. You get the cultivation of the mind and the intellect, but also you get the hands -on...

palpable like the taste and the touch and the smell and the feelings and the in -person interactions. It's so powerful and as you study the brain research, right? It's just...

Rachel Denning (22:33.037)
creating this neural network of high, it's just explosive and we can all see that. Every one of those is a new neural connection that's being made that can be strengthened or weakened. Exactly and as I mentioned this in another training somewhere else a long time ago, but it's easy for us to visually conceptualize a brain that has let's say a million neural connections.

and a brain that has a hundred million neural connections. And that's a very real concept. People who lack exposure and experience who just do the same thing day in and out. And most people just repeat. That's what they do. And this is the very beginning of the year, you guys. So it's January 2nd right now. And this year, 2023, can be a repeat of last year. And it will be for most people. Most people have...

They figure about 91 % of their thoughts are just repeats from yesterday. And so it's fair to say that 90 plus percent.

of their experiences are just going to be repeats. And so they don't have years of experience, they have the same experience year after year. They don't have a plethora of thoughts, they just have the same thoughts again and again. And so it's a very, very real thing and I want you to visualize that, see that. There's a brain with a million neural connections and one with a hundred million neural connections.

So it's a completely different reality scaffolding in that brain that then can be, because the more connections you have, the bigger your scaffolding, the more you're able to comprehend and understand and the more connections you're able to make between things and objects and histories. And like, there's just so much more capability there. And so one of the things I remember you emphasizing with this client of yours when you were having this discussion is that,

Rachel Denning (24:29.741)
You have the ability to build or save an asset for your children that you could then give to them, say a college fund, or you have the opportunity to build or create them, develop them into an asset.

Does that make sense? Can you see the difference there? It's so powerful. So you can have an asset or you can be an asset. Yes, exactly. And when you stop and think about it, you know, people...

You've probably come across these questions, you'll see something online or somewhere, somebody will ask you like, would you rather have a million dollars or have the knowledge to gain a million dollars? And some of us will be like, I'll take the million, right? But what if you had the knowledge and ability to earn the million or create the million or...

Like you'd want that because it's replicable. You just do it again and again and again. That's real wealth. And so would you rather have an asset or be an asset? For me, all day long, I'd rather be an asset. And that's how I'm raising my kids to be assets. And they are, and that's not just in our little subjective reality of what we think our kids are great. They're being compensated and they're being offered opportunities because they've become assets. Exactly. So it reminds me of a

When you were talking about that, I have this very vivid memory. I was pregnant with our sixth and we were living in Costa Rica and we had just moved into a house that we were going to house it and that ended up being where she was born.

Rachel Denning (26:19.341)
But it was kind of in a way, it wasn't our lowest point, but it was kind of a low point. We were trying to figure out the whole income thing, like where this was going to come from and how it was going to work. How to work online. Yeah, how to work online. And this was back when I was just getting started. Yeah. It was tough. So we were trying to figure all of that out. We were pursuing our dream, but there were obviously challenges associated with that. And I remember our oldest, Kaia, who's now 20.

She had a dream and she told me about it in the morning and I remember that it just impacted me so much. She said that essentially in the dream we met our future selves. Like it was our family and we met us in the future. And our future selves said to us, hey, if you want, you know, we can just give you all the money and everything right now and you can have all the success you want. Or,

you can go through the process of becoming us. Becoming the people who are capable of obtaining this success. And she said in the dream, we were like, oh yeah, that's what we want. We want to become those people. And I remember feeling like, wow, that's really profound. First of all, from, I think she was like 10 or 11 at the time.

And also like validating of like, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're going through this process of becoming the people who are capable of achieving and maintaining success long term. And so that's exactly what I thought when you were describing that. Here's the conundrum with all of that. When we sit down and you're in a...

nice place and in a good spot. And you say, do you want to become that kind of person? You want to be your best self? Most people would be like, yeah, I totally want that. And then you say, well, there's going to be some hard times. Do you want to go through some hard, you want to go through some challenging and do hard things with your family? And most people are going to be like, yeah, of course I want to go through hard things with my family. But then the reality, no, there's a few of us saying,

Rachel Denning (28:35.919)
But most of us will still say yes and most of you listening will be like, yeah, we want to do the hard things required to become great people.

We want to support and encourage and lead, this is important, we want to lead our children through challenges to show them how it's done so that they can become great people. I mean, all great parents want that. And they realize that, you know, it's through the struggle. It's the struggle that makes us strong. It's your struggle, it's your kid's struggle, it's the struggle that makes us strong. And so you're like, are you willing to go through the struggle to become strong? We're like, yeah. The problem with that is that hard things,

our heart. And when you're in it, you're like, this sucks. And this is like a natural impulse from just the survival brain. The survival brain just wakes up and says, let's get out of this. Whatever we have to do to get out of this, let's get out of this. Like I need my comforts, I need my conveniences. Let's do whatever has to be done to get out of this.

And this is why coaching and accountability and having mentors is so important. Because we all need our coaches to remind us of like, hey dude, that's your survival brain talking. You're actually in the middle of what you wanted. You're in the middle when you're just wanting to quit and your survival brain is just screaming, like do whatever you have to do to stop the pain.

You have to realize, oh, wait a minute. This is my dream. This is my dream. I'm living the dream. I'm living the dream right now. And this is what I was working through with my client the other day. They're so awesome and they're chasing their dream. And obviously chasing your dreams is hard.

Rachel Denning (30:19.981)
Amidst the highlights, we don't always think it's going to be like that. We think chasing the dream is going to be dreamy. But the truth is, this is the hard truth that a lot of people can't accept or this is why they give up because when you actually start chasing the dream, it's really hard and it's really sometimes annoying and frustrating and terrifying and inconvenient. So uncomfortable and irritating and even as experienced travelers as we travel.

as we are and is masterful of a planner as Rachel is, it is inevitable that we're going to hit some massive roadblocks. And you're like, what the? Like, I thought we were past this crap. It still happens. Things just don't work out like you think. We should just tell what happened last night. So first of all, we've been traveling quickly for the past two weeks because it's Christmas break and New Year's break.

And so, you know, we're like, we're going to take a break from working. We're going to travel more quickly. And we're going to cover thousands of miles of five countries. Right.

But inevitably you have to slow down because that's not sustainable long term with a family when you're trying to work and do school and all of that. That's a specific strategy by the way. That's a strategy. You have to slow down. If you're going to want to do this long term and you want to have all the great experiences, see a lot, you have to slow down and have down days, which most people don't want to do that. They're like, I'm out traveling. And that's like tourism. And you're like, no, you're going to be in that city and you're going to spend the day sitting in a hotel, which is what we've done.

today. Reading, studying, working. You've got to slow down and act, behave like in a normal day -to -day work day like you would at home.

Rachel Denning (32:11.885)
but you do it in a foreign place. And that's a quick strategy. But keep going with the story. So I had scheduled that into our itinerary, and so I had planned for us to do this quick travel, celebrate New Year's in Estonia, and then yesterday we took a bus from Estonia to Latvia, to Riga, and I had booked these two apartments.

that we were going to spend the weekend doing school and work and you know. And the pictures of the apartments look beautiful. And yesterday we took a five hour bus and we got off and we walked for 20 minutes. Hold up, so you guys we've been in Norway.

Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Tallinn, everything nice and clean and neat and like hardly a police officer anywhere. I mean there was a little bit of graffiti in Copenhagen and some rougher spots, but we got here and I'm trying not to pass...

like definitive judgment because it was New Year's Day. But before we left the bus terminal, I saw a bunch of drug use, some outright alcoholism just gone. The guys beat up, bleeding all over. I saw some crazy stuff and there are filth and garbage everywhere, trash, the streets. I mean, we just rolled into this. It seemed like like we just stepped into another realm. And I told the kids, I'm like, hey,

You're on high alert now, like we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. This is not Norway anymore. And we've traveled to rougher spots, so it's not like that's a problem per se.

Rachel Denning (33:59.117)
But then, so we walked 20 minutes to our apartment and, you know, of course we've got all of our baggage and luggage and everything and the kids are better at walking now, the little ones especially, so that wasn't a big deal. But then we get there and basically the instructions are like, go down this dark alley to the apartment. And it literally was the iconic dark alley with graffiti all over and like mud roads and like no lights. So we go back there and we're like, okay.

And then there's this old wooden, looked like a haunted house. That's what it looked like. Building. And we had to go up these steps and we go inside and it smells like mold. It was terrible hard to get in. Like the code, it was this funky code weird. So getting in was tricky. Yeah. And then it's this musty old moldy, like the building is rotting. The building had to be a hundred years old or more. I don't know. But it's this inside then it's very rustic.

and there's three different doors. Rustic isn't the right word. It's very poorly built. It was bad. So we finally get into the apartment that we're supposed to be in, that was getting into the building and then we get into the apartment, and it's teeny.

There's actually nine of us because we have someone traveling with us, a friend, and this was a teeny studio apartment with one bed. And we're like... And it was like forced into a studio. So basically it's one room. Think of a closet. A kitchen, bathroom, bed.

all right there in one little spot. It was beautifully decorated, it was super cute, it was nice. They did a good job with the decorations, but that was about it. So we stand there for a minute and we're like, hmm, well obviously we're not going to all fit in here. I double checked the thing, I was supposed to have another apartment obviously and...

Rachel Denning (35:58.893)
How are we supposed to get into it? There's no instructions. Well, we take the same key and the same key happened to work on the other door for the other apartment. Those of you who can't connect the dots there, if one key opens all the doors, it's not very safe. There's a little bit of a security issue. Somebody was trying to save some money and everybody's got the same key. But we opened the other apartment because then I looked at my thing and said, oh yeah, 9A and 9B. Well, we were in 9B and so we opened 9A, but 9A.

disaster it was like filled with stuff and clothes everywhere and food everywhere and we're like oh the bed undone and we're like somebody's living somebody is living here right now so anyways

We ended up, this is a long detour here, but the point is, we had to solve that problem right there. This is travel. The point was that I'm a good travel planner, and yet here we still had this obstacle that we had to solve. This is not quite what we expected. It was not quite what was online. And now what are we gonna do about it? We have to solve this right now.

And so you're living the dream and even if you're on my Instagram channel, you know, if you're following me on Instagram and I'm posting all these reels. Now I am pretty authentic and I share all everything, the whole journey and our stories. But when you look at the feed, you're like, these people are living the dream. And so we have this in our mind of like living the dream is dreamy. But the reality of it is while it does definitely have that dreamy element, because if it didn't have that at all, you wouldn't do it. You'd be like, what's the point? Yeah.

there are those highlights and that's why we do it and that's why we go through the pain of doing it but there's still a lot of pain and suffering you know quote -unquote it's not like it's not doable. We're not complaining here about our life. We're not throwing a pity party and inviting you guys to join us. Well, let me give this context though.

Rachel Denning (38:01.069)
And this is part of the growth that happens as a result. There was a time when what happened last night, I would have been in tears. This time I was just like, oh, okay, well, let's find another hotel. Let's book it. You know, I don't know if we're going to get our money back or not. If we don't, oh well, we're not staying here. You know? And, but there was a time when we first started traveling where that would have been a huge deal. I would have felt like that's it. We can't do it. We can't afford it.

It's not going to work out. It's not meant to happen. Why are we traveling? Like I would have gone through that entire process when now I just know, oh, this is just a part of it. And the survival brain wants to scream out like bad things only happen when you're out traveling or chasing your dreams, which is a lie, right? We have to constantly remind ourselves like stuff happens, whether you're at home or abroad. It happens. Theft happens.

in foreign countries and in your own country. Guess what? People get sick, even those who stay at home. Like, it just happens. And so we've gotta be careful not to come up with these stories that kind of warp our realities one way or the other, which is super powerful. But let's, again, so the encouragement here, invest heavily in experiences.

in memories, in neuro connections, exposure.

Anything you can do to invest in exposure is huge. Now this has to come with a disclaimer or maybe a warning. You can throw down all the money and go out and you know pay for these tens of thousands of dollars, go have these cool trips and go places and you can come back unchanged and so can your kids. You can come back unaffected like in that great book, The Phantom Tollbooth. There's a little bug in there and he's called a Woggle Bug. He swims across the sea of knowledge and gets out without

Rachel Denning (39:59.151)
getting a drop of water on him, right? And people do that. They swim across the sea of knowledge. They go out and they have all these experiences and they get through the whole thing without getting any of it on them. I don't know how they do that. Most of them probably just looking at their phone. So you could go see the coolest place in the world and if you're distracted or disinterested, if you're just scrolling on wherever, you could miss out.

You can miss out on the experience and exposure. So it actually has to be done deliberately and with intention and tact and strategy. So we are very, very strategic about what we do and how we do it. And that makes the difference. Getting into one of these other strategies, I think...

It also has to do with paying attention and how we respond to the things that do happen. And that can be with an example like last night, but it's also with other things. Because in another coaching session you were talking about how...

you know, you're out traveling with your kids and you're noticing that, well, they can't do this or they don't know how to do that or they make a mess or they're too loud or they break things or whatever. All these things that happen and we've experienced all of that. But this being intentional side of it is and having experience and exposure, it's basically saying, oh, here's where the deficiencies are in myself, in my kids, in our family. Us traveling and going out is exposing.

our deficiencies. Now you can either just ignore that and say, it's those people or it's that or it's this. Or you can stop doing the thing that exposes them. You're like, whenever we try that, that exposes our deficiencies. Let's not do that anymore. Right. Or...

Rachel Denning (41:43.021)
you can learn from it and then be intentional about it and make the change. And that's one thing that we've always done to make the travel a worthwhile investment into our children is when the deficiencies are exposed, which happens and it happens every time. It's happened on this track. It's not working if it's not happening. Then we take the time and effort to draw attention to it, to kind of call our kids out on it or ourselves and say, you know what,

guys, we notice this, that doesn't work. That's not good enough. Like you're going to have to do better. You're going to have to be better. And I've had those talks with our kids already. I think another perfect example of this was, I think we were in Helsinki. I don't know. And we went out for the day. We were only there for two days, two nights, one day of real sightseeing.

and we went out to see the city and especially our youngest were kind of complaining. They were like, they just wanted to sit in the hotel, which I get that, you know, sometimes kids want that and they need that sometimes. But we were going to go out because that was our only time to go out and we'd spent the night before sitting in the hotel. And they were kind of complaining about it.

and they didn't want to do it and we were kind of getting annoyed by it because you know we're like entitlement you know all the things all the issues are coming up and then we went to this market that I wanted to go to is an indoor market and they had gelato now all of a sudden their attitude changed because they wanted some gelato

and I used that as the perfect opportunity to draw attention to their deficiencies. I said, here you've been walking around complaining, not wanting to do what we want to do, but when you want something, then immediately you expect us to buy it for you. I said, that's not acceptable.

Rachel Denning (43:35.469)
That's not okay. You need to have a good attitude. You need to go along with the things we want to do as well because this is a part of travel and you need to be pleasant about it. And if you do those things, then I want to buy gelato for you, right? I want to give you more of these positive experiences. I want to do the things you want because you've been patient while we do the things we want. It's this beautiful way to be in relationships. Yes. But you,

But here's the problem, if you don't call attention to that specifically, if you just think about it in your head and you feel resentful towards your kids. Or you don't understand what's going on. Or you don't understand what's happening. Or you don't understand what's happening. Yeah. Then that's where you were talking about you can, you know, swim through the sea of knowledge and not get wet because you don't know what's going on. You're not aware of what's happening. You have to be able to pay attention, notice, articulate it, and then come up with some sort of...

solution and then plus then I was able to use that as like an anchor so now all I have to do is if my kids are you know starting to complain a little bit or whining about oh I don't want to eat this or I don't want to do that like remember the gelato and I specifically said those words because I wanted to anchor it at the when I was buying it because I had the top first.

And then I did buy them the gelato like, you know, maybe a half hour later. But I said, I want you to remember the gelato. You want the good things, but you're gonna have to go through the uncomfortable things too. And you're going to have to have a good attitude about it. And so now I can use that and they're like, okay, I will remember and do better. And it helps them change their behavior and self -regulate. So powerful for all of us, especially in parenting or teaching like anger.

Create principles out of those experiences and anchor them so that it reinforces it. And I wish you guys could see it in our older kids. They just endure everything beautifully. Not a word of complaint. They have the best attitudes. Everything falls apart and they're like, sweet, where are we going next? And it's because we've been training them their whole lives this way. And it's funny to see them too with the younger kids because they will. I mean, I...

Rachel Denning (45:53.167)
I've heard my kids literally say these words of like, if mom and dad tell you to sleep on the floor or to eat that, like you will do it because they're doing all of this for us. Like you're just going to, you're going to deal with whatever they say we're going to deal with without complaining. You know, like they just know, they just have the standard of like, we're just going to, whatever comes, we're going to handle it and deal with it. And that's how it is. And that's not born of luck. It's born of experience and teaching. Again, that's part of what we're talking about. The investment in them, they cash, they just,

endure whatever discomfort joyfully and then they'll help other like they'll pick somebody else's stuff like I got this let's go and they just have become they've become assets. Exactly well they absolutely have they have become assets because traveling with them now compared to when they were small I mean it was so much harder then and now they are assets like they're just helpful in so many ways it's unreal. In fact our son right now is heading back to the laundromat on his well he's going back with his brother.

and ride scooters. They're gonna go rock around town on their own and go pick up laundry and bring it back for us, right? This is awesome. It's a cool experience. But let's share some logistics. Yes. So and I hope the logistics helps. I know I hope you'll want to travel. I hope you'll put some big dreams and plans on your calendar this year and do it now. Spend some time this week and put some big stuff on the calendar even if you do not yet know how you can pull it off. Put it on the calendar.

I think that's a key ingredient. You have to do it before you know how you'll pull it off. That's the only way you'll actually pull it off is by committing to do it before knowing how to do it. And we learned that a hard way by with all the best intentions.

wanting to do things and never doing them. And it just pains me still. And when we finally say, you know what, if it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done. And if you don't commit to it, it's not likely to happen. So you just got to pick something to say, this is going to happen. And what happens is your mind and God and the universe conspire in your favor to work things out, to start finding options and opportunities to make things happen. It's really powerful. And I just, I want to emphasize that because I know we've talked about it before and I know we've done other podcast episodes about it, but it's just so.

Rachel Denning (48:09.327)
true. Like we've never had...

the way paved before us before we took the first step. Like that's never ever ever happened and it doesn't happen like that. Every single time we've done anything that appears to be amazing or incredible or inspiring, it's always been with a lot of effort and it's always happened by stepping into the unknown, not knowing how we're going to make it happen. And it's often included just moving forward forward anyways. Like even with this trip, we're

on right now and this has happened before with every trip we've done not the specific thing but something like it with this trip our plan had been to sell our house as that was part of our plan but we didn't sell the house.

But we went forward anyways. Like we just still moved ahead because we're like, no, we've committed to this. We're going to do it. We're going to make it happen. Now we're going to rent out our house, which is another great option as well. But I guess it's like, it's not that everything always works out perfectly. It's that you, I will either find a way or I will make a way. Like that's what it is. You just find a way or you make a way to make it happen. And that's how you achieve your dreams. And almost always in order to make a way, you...

have to become more of more. You have to become more and so you have to be bigger and better which is exactly the formula for life. It's why we're here. It's why we were created to become more. And it's actually exactly the point at least one of them of why you're doing it. To become more. To become more of an asset. It's by growing into...

Rachel Denning (49:54.189)
that person who's able to make it happen. So, okay. So one of the questions was, I'm wondering how you guys do it. You must be minimalistic as you have to take all your belongings with you when you travel around the world. Well, we look like a circus show every time we move. There was so much stuff. There was a time when we did literally take pretty much all of our belongings with us when we traveled. At this point though, we don't because just answering this as we go, we actually have a full storage unit back in the

state of Georgia that we will be shipping to Portugal when we finally settle there. But we are carrying...

about two bags per person currently. So one large bag. Well, actually the little girls have a little backpack. That's it. Well, they have two bags, but they're two small bags. Like a backpack size that they can handle and a smaller backpack for their toys. And then Atlas is 12 and he's got a decent size backpack, but it's even partially empty. So he's good. And then all the adults have a big bag and then a backpack. Yeah. So we all have about two bags each. And I'm carrying, I figured it's about 80 pounds.

of stuff I'm over every time it goes wrong. Mine's probably around 50 pounds and I was going to we were all going to backpack Europe and I started with a backpack but then realized it was too small.

and then realized I wasn't going to be able to carry a bigger bag so I ended up getting a rolling bag. We put like a 25 pound pack on Rachel and she about fell over and we're like this is not going to work. I think it was bigger than that but anyway so I have a rolling bag that I got from REI which is amazing. Oh that's incredible. I think 100 liters. 110 liters. Pretty much full. And then I was on a I went on an expedition trip to Guatemala and Honduras and so I was practicing.

Rachel Denning (51:46.607)
thing living out of my bag and I had about 75 to 80 liters and I realized it wasn't gonna be enough so I bought a huge duffel bag in Guatemala that's 130 liters. Yes. So that's my big bag and then I was carrying that sucker around and it worked. It has straps on it so it worked but it's huge so then I was like man how there's got to be a way to I loved Rachel's setup. Yes. So I was like Josh this is great how can I get some wheels so we were in Oslo, Norway and

I started looking around and I went into this hardware store and they had this collapsible hardware dolly that can carry like 300 pounds. These big wheels. And I'm like, beautiful. I'm going to strap my bag to this thing. And so that's what I've been doing. And it's been awesome. So it's like, it's like having a huge piece of luggage on wheels. It works fantastic. So that's, there's another little hack there for, for when you're, when you're wandering, get a little. Well, and so speaking of the duffel bags, because.

Because that's kind of another little hack. The reason why you have the duffel bag, and I actually bought a bag that's duffel bag style, is because you can lift up the flap that basically opens up the entire thing. And you can see almost all your stuff at a glance. Yeah, one of the hardest things about a traditional backpack, although I think they're changing them nowadays, is that you have to dig down into the bag to try and find your stuff, and that's a lot harder when you're doing that, especially daily. You've got packing cubes in there. Packing cubes is of course another...

But if you can't see all of them, you have to pull them all out and put them back in. So if you can just open the bag and see everything in there, that's a lot easier way to access your stuff. And then if you can pack everything in the same packing cube in the same way every time, that kind of order helps with like, ah, where's my shirt? Where's my shirt? Where's my sock? I can't find anything. Actually, this makes a huge difference. And it's basically the idea of putting everything in the same pocket every time. So every time I need my chapstick or my nail clipper,

like they're in the same pocket always or my headphones or it because if you just end up throwing them wherever every time you go looking for it you don't know where it is and so you're going crazy because you're like where is that I can't find it that's actually a really important point I want to make and this can happen whether you're traveling or at home if you're disorganized like that

Rachel Denning (54:06.445)
It gets so irritating, so frustrating and you're just like, I'm from my stuff. Well, it's over here. It's over there. And you get so frustrated and you keep blaming the circumstance, which is the perfect example of self -sabotage. It's not the circumstance. It's your habit. Yes. Your habit is causing the irritation, the frustration that you're blaming on this thing. So you might want to stop or your survival brain says this hurts. This is painful. Stop doing this thing. And you avoid it when reality was you just didn't have a good system. And that's so

True with everything it's true with whether it's cooking or cleaning or taking your kids to the park or whatever You know you might want to take your kids skiing and you did it once and oh man. I was terrible I'm never doing that again. We learned our lesson and no you didn't learn your lesson you learned the wrong lesson It's it's often. It's not always come back to systems and strategies Yeah, so when you have a simple system like that, then you're not frustrated about where where's my eye? Mask or my earplugs?

or my journal, you know exactly where it is because you put it in the same place every time and it's always there and you can find it when you need it. And it just eliminates so much hassle. Something just came to mind I want to share. We all have laptops. The kids brought iPads. We got new iPads for the kids that are small and then we've got headphones specifically for the girls.

Well, for everybody actually. Everybody has headphones. So that on long ferries or long train rides or bus rides, they can watch movies because that's a really good way to pass the time. But we also then use them. And again, there's controls on it and everything, and we use them very strategically for study time. So today's a study, this whole week is a study week, right? And so they're using those devices to access all kinds of academies, schools, classes, tutors, apps for education on those books.

and particularly audio books. We love and emphasize audio books in our family. So, and this kind of ties into the next part of this question. I'm finding it hard to let go of things, especially my kids books and toys. I guess I have an emotional attachment which I need to get rid of. You guys love to read books, but what do you do with them when you travel? Do you just get rid of everything? And we kind of answered that a little bit. But this is a real thing. And we went through this thing. You do literally have an emotional attachment to your stuff. That's

Rachel Denning (56:27.087)
legit. Every one of us has that.

We initially went through the process of breaking that emotional attachment. We, well, we talked about this before the podcast, but we didn't mention it here. When we started pursuing our dream life, which was, our dream life was full -time family travel, we couldn't afford to do both. We had to choose. And so back then we chose to give up all of the stuff in order to pursue...

the dream of traveling. And that was a painful process. It was difficult. But so powerful and relieving afterwards. Yeah. Like it's like ripping the bandaid off. You know, to watch your things go out the door to some stranger, you're just like, ugh. But then all of a sudden you felt so free. Yeah, you did. So light. It was a process that I would say, I know what I'm...

how hard this could be, but I would say I would recommend it to people. It's a worthwhile process of feeling free of all of your belongings. I think it's been said before that you...

your possessions possess you, like you don't own them, they own you. And I definitely felt that that was true. We went through that. So that's something that we went through of giving up everything in order to pursue the dream and which eventually became actually an investment in ourselves, an investment in our children. So it was worth it in every way.

Rachel Denning (57:58.605)
But we also then realized going through that process that I remember specifically coming to this realization of like, well, actually, you know, some possessions are valuable. They bring you joy. They bring you utility. So owning stuff, because for a while we were kind of like owning things. We don't want to own anything, you know? And then we were like, well, no, actually owning things can be great and wonderful as long as it doesn't control you. And so we came back into this, you know, owning things that brought us joy and pleasure.

and utility. Keep what is essential and what has high value. So actually we store a lot of our wealth in nice things including nice books and we purchase art and we buy lots of nice things and those things yes we do store. Right so now we are at this point where and it was specifically I think the last three years where we had a home base in the States and we did you know we acquired furniture you've been collecting leather books and things.

like that. I feel like I need to buy some more. I'm just having this rich. Greg loves anything leather pretty much.

So now at this point, we have not given up or gotten rid of all of those things. We now have the option to choose and we are traveling, but we put all that stuff in storage so that we can move them to our future home base in Portugal and set it all up there, right? We did do a huge purge though, which was, again, it was a great experience. Sell off and give away tons of things. It was a really great experience. I honestly think purging in general is just something you should do regularly.

Because of the nature of our lifestyle, we end up purging every six months, if not more. And I love it. I love purging. I think it's great to do because by nature you just end up collecting way too much stuff. And I think back to this whole systems and strategies thing, a lot of the reason people have a frustration and annoyance and irritation in their life is because part of it is they just have too much stuff. They literally don't have enough room for everything they own. Like that's just another...

Rachel Denning (01:00:08.559)
simple strategy. Don't have more stuff than you have room for storing. Pretty safe to say most Americans, this is going to sound really bold, but most Americans have too much stuff. And most of them will be the first ones to tell you that. We just have too much stuff. But again, like Rachel was alluding to, we're in a different place now. We have a beautiful home and some property in Central America and it's fully furnished and decorated and it's all there. It's stacked. It's fully loaded. We can show up and it's ready to operate and - We can walk right in or we can rent it out. It's

is fully ready and then we are we're purchasing another home in in the south that we'll rent out so that'll be an asset but there's a home there it is mostly empty but then we're in a different spot and then we're gonna go we're gonna go get a place in Portugal.

eventually in France as well. Yeah, so back to this idea that if you are wanting to have more experiences, you might need to go through that process. You might need to go through the process of getting rid of things.

moving out of your house, selling your house, you know, there's a lot of different options, only you are really gonna know what's best for you, but it might be something that's a part of your journey of going through that process because it is a very worthwhile process to help you.

grow, develop, and to have this proper relationship with stuff. Stuff and things. One of the things that comes up, they came up for us big time and comes up for a lot of clients or people we work with. Again, all these experiences. So even going through this process, even this email that we received, what it is, it brings up the things. Like you start thinking through something and it brings up an issue that needs to be addressed. Don't back away from it. Be like, Ooh, that's interesting. What is this revealing? What is this calling me to do?

Rachel Denning (01:01:57.103)
And one of the things that came up for us and with others is the scarcity mindset. So often this quote attachment to your stuff is actually fear. Fear based in scarcity. Like, oh man, if I get rid of this, I may never have it again or this cost me so much. This was so hard. And it's all born out of a scarcity mindset and that needs to be addressed. So whatever you're out doing or however you're doing, if that fear or the scarcity starts to come up, it needs to be addressed.

be addressed. Don't just back away from it because of scarcity. Lean into it and address it. Exactly. That's a great point there.

Okay, so, well, and because you mentioned the kids books and the toys, I think it's also important to touch on that a little bit because it's a good process for your kids to go through as well. Like they have to learn this journey. They have to go through this journey. Okay, we're back. You didn't know we were gone. You didn't know we were gone. We didn't know we were gone. We were going on for like another good 30 minutes about all kinds of awesome things. It was amazing. So good. So that's, we're going to revisit all.

that and answer some more questions in the next podcast. So be ready for the next episode. It's going to be awesome. We tried to re -say what we just said. Yeah, because the recording just stopped, but we just wanted to emphasize there, whatever comes up.

like see it as an opportunity, a calling to chance to grow, do it with your kids. You know, we're buying little toys with the kids along the way here on the trip. They're getting little things and they left some things and... Right. It's a good process for your kids to go through because we're tying it back into this, that they go through this process as well of being able to detach from things. That's good for your kids to do and to be able to value, have more value for one thing than another. Like that's something that we have done with our kids.

Rachel Denning (01:03:50.927)
of like, okay, you can't have everything, which one do you love the most? You can bring that one, right? You get to bring that toy, the other things, some of the things you get to get rid of, because you don't care about them that much, others you get to keep and see later. So it's just this process of identifying.

what you value more, what brings you more joy, right? What a great benefit for our kids to start learning how to do that early on in a really healthy way because ultimately the underlying practice here in principle is your relationship with things. We all have a relationship with stuff and things and food and money and whatever and so working on that relationship is a beautiful thing. Well, and we see the sickness of that in something like

hoarders, you know, people who are hoarding stuff, it's because they have a very unhealthy relationship with stuff. And so it is good for that's another reason we found value in traveling in this process. We went through with getting rid of our things was that it helped us to fix that relationship and helps our kids to practice doing that so that we don't end up being hoarders or something like that, you know, do you want to do what it does though? Exposure. And I again,

You guys know we are advocates of travel because I think it is one of the most effective ways to get exposure. But exposure reveals things about yourself. And so in going out and traveling and having experiences,

It's like you bump into things. You bump into a lot of different things and some of them are like, well, that's great. And some are like, oh man, that hurts. And it's just pointing out areas where you can grow and improve or make adjustments. And so as you're going along, it's the perfect environment for refinement and improvement. Just like you and I always talk about with marriage. Your marriage isn't so that you have someone there that will just accept you the way you are and you don't have to go and improve anything.

Rachel Denning (01:05:55.791)
Yeah, it's just like oh don't ever change. Just you're just perfect the way you are. Just be that way It's the exact opposite the marriage is the perfect environment for growth and that kind of growth hurts Like you're living with another human being who's pointing out all your flaws and holding up a mirror to you and like hey stop doing that's annoying Or it's pathetic. It's underdeveloped. That's what marriage is for that's what travel can be for right? And so we're going out and quote finding ourselves, but that's not enough. I think it was George Bernard Schatz. I think just stop

stop trying to find yourself and start choosing to make yourself. And so...

Travel can be this self -discovery, but really all it's doing is revealing all the things we can work on. Which is really awesome. I love that idea. That's why we go through it and that's why we have our kids go through it because they're practicing that journey. And it's every part of it. It's not just the getting on the plane. It's not just seeing the famous site and taking the Instagram photo. It's everything that leads up to that, which includes getting rid of my stuff. And you know,

fixing my attachment to things and all of it. Okay so...

We're going to kind of close this one up and do another episode, despite the fact that we went on for another half hour before. Answering other questions and diving into this super cool philosophical idea around, I'll just tease it out here, geographic restriction. And how that is playing out in your life and restricting your life. But just to finish with this one question, because we did start getting into the other question for that, which we'll now do next time.

Rachel Denning (01:07:37.581)
I don't think we covered this already now that I can't remember but she said, you guys love to read books. What do you do with them when you travel? And I think we did talk a little bit about that, that was lost. We do love books. And, but on...

It's kind of this idea of, and I don't remember if I talked about it or not, about the type of travel you're doing. That's going to determine. I find the type of travel you're doing is constantly determining how we pack, what we pack.

What kind of bag we, because I get questions like this all the time. What kind of bag do you use or suitcase? What do you pack on a trip? I'm like, it totally depends on the type of trip we're doing. If you're road tripping or over landing, that's going to be totally different packing than if you're backpacking or if you're flying on a plane versus, you know, taking a train or versus staying at an Airbnb versus hotels. The type of trip you're doing determines what you're packing essentially and how you're packing. All of that makes a difference.

one physical book and I bought three for my habits class which and so habits for sex successful life class for youth and young adults these next week these three books were super pivotal at different points of my life they are game -changing awesome we're actually gonna do four books in this in this semester so if you have you three adults man get in on this it starts next week it's incredible so you brought those and we miss we all miss physical books right Parker

been reading massive amounts of Kindle books. We've all been listening to audiobooks, which we love to do anyways. And so I've been reading on my phone, which I hate to do, and I've been listening, which I love to do, but I miss having a physical book in my hand. But because of the type of trip we were doing, which was traveling by train through Europe, we've traveled, we've road tripped Europe before and we brought lots of books that time. Because we had a massive safari roof rack and a trailer. Yes. So that was a different type of travel.

Rachel Denning (01:09:41.231)
But this time we needed to be light because we have to carry everything and you know walk with it. So not very many physical books.

But we have all my nice leather books and we will ship them to my library because I want a huge, huge personal library. So the good books stay. Yeah, you kept all of your nice leather books that you have and we're going to ship them to Portugal. But like here's one example that relates to education. I did have a book that I've used with most of my kids on teaching them how to read in 100 Easy Lessons. And I was using that with my two youngest girls and I thought about bringing it, but it's

kind of a big book and it's paperback and I ultimately decided not to bring it and I'm glad I did because it was just too big and so in that place I'm using apps and other things to help them continue with their learning despite that that would have been their first preference is to bring that book but it just was too much and so...

It's just kind of this weighing of options. And then it doesn't mean, and see sometimes we think, well, oh, I guess we just can't do that. I guess my kids just can't learn how to read while we're traveling. So maybe we just shouldn't travel because they need this book to learn how to read. Well, no, you just have to find other solutions. There's other ways to do it. You just have to be creative and look for answers instead of saying, oh, if this, then that. In the next episode, we'll...

allude to this with musical instruments and developing long -term skills and abilities. Do we have to sacrifice that? What does that look like? Are there alternatives? And how do we pursue mastery and education while being on the move? Is it possible? Do I have to give up education and mastery in order to travel? Or is there a way to have both?

Rachel Denning (01:11:30.573)
Yes, and we are going to recreate that amazing conversation. Yes, we are. Because it is awesome. OK, love you guys. Thanks for listening. If you've liked this and you haven't, leave a rating for the podcast. Share this with friends and family and colleagues, people who are interested. You had conversations about this stuff. Show these episodes. Get us out there so we can all live our own unique dream lives and raise absolutely extraordinary families. Love you guys. Reach upward.

Rachel Denning (01:12:03.213)
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Rachel Denning (01:12:14.509)
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Rachel Denning (01:12:18.189)
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