Why Being “Content” Is Secretly Keeping You (and Your Family) Stuck

True happiness does not come from re removing desire. True happiness comes from pursuing your best desires. Achievement is what drives pursuit and transformation. Find more happiness in life by refusing to be content with the circumstances you don't like. We become complacent and call it contentedness and gratitude. Hey there, this is Greg Denny. We want to reach as many people as possible and help as many families as possible with these conversations and we want to keep this podcast ad free forever. You can help us do that by subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcast or wherever you listen your favorite platform and on YouTube and leave a quick review and and share your favorite episodes with friends and family. It makes a big difference. Thank you for being a part of this very important movement. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We're your hosts, Greg and Rachel Denning, and today we've got a doozy. Very exciting. Rachel has a story to share. And then I have some ranting to do. And Rachel's kind of feisty today. So, we might have some ranting and some raving. So, be forwarned, people. Before we started here, you were discussing the topic and it was essentially why is it people don't have the life that they want? Why is it that so many people feel like they're living an unhappy dream? Right? What makes that a reality for them? Yes. And and so for those of you listening, like please take this personally. Like make it personal. Make it real for you. Stop and say, "Am I living truly living the life I want?" So, I want you to go in your own, you know, in your mind palace, in your heart and soul, and look at the real dream. And I know some of you have set that aside, have buried it deep because it's painful to think about. It's disappointing because when you stop and think about it, you're like, "Yeah, my life isn't where I want it to be." Yeah. This doesn't look like what I wanted it to look like. And that hurts. But where there's pain, there's power. So as you're thinking about this, like, okay, are am I living my dream life? And if not, why? What's off here? In order for you to actually achieve, to do more, to pursue your dream, there does have to be this what we now call divine discontent where you have to be discontented with what you have. One of the things you say is you get what you tolerate. You have to stop tolerating what you have. And that can be very difficult for people. You and I, I believe, have learned how to do that in a healthy way where we can 100% be filled with gratitude for everything we have, but at the same time be like, I am done tolerating this. I will not put up with this anymore. I am changing it. Y and that's what gets us the results we want. Too often, people aren't willing to do that. they continue to tolerate that instead of not tolerating it anymore so that they can get the results they actually want within yourself. You're like, "No, I will not allow that anymore. I'm not going to tolerate that behavior from myself anymore. I'm going to raise the standards." This is this is on you. And so what it means is more work. So if if I have an inner divine discontent and I say, you know, I'm not tolerating that anymore. What I have just done is I've committed to more work, more effort for yourself. It begins on the inside. And so people will often wonder, how do we have the results that we do, especially, you know, with our family and with our kids? It's because you and I are doing the work every single day on ourselves. We work harder on ourselves than we do on anything else, which is the key to success and happiness. Which is the key to success and happiness in everything that you want, including your family life, including the relationships you want with your children. the outcomes you want with your children, man. The things your kids need most need to come from you. Exactly. So important. And they they can't come from you unless one, you have the knowledge within yourself. Two, you you live it. Yeah. You got the results. You teach who you are. And if you don't live the message, you suck as the messenger. Exactly. Right. And three, you know how to communicate it well to them. I've noticed in a lot of people and sometimes in myself even that we become complacent and call it contentedness and gratitude. True. And it's it's very subtle but it is very important. Right? Like if I'm comp there there's a difference between content and complacent. If you become complacent and you just say, "Well, no, I I got to be grateful and contented, right? Because those are virtues." Well, yeah, but you're being complacent. And I believe that that's the exact opposite of how to find true happiness. True happiness does not come from re removing desire. True happiness comes from pursuing your best desires. And even even there there's a subtle thing. I think the fulfillment and the meaning come in the pursuit, not even necessarily the achievement. Right? The achievement is what drives pursuit and transformation. And the real fulfillment and growth and happiness comes in the transformation. as you're becoming something because you'll get there and you'll achieve the thing and you'll be like, "Hey, that was super cool." But that's not that's not it. It's like, "Wow, man, look who I've become." That's it, right? The path to becoming your the very best version of yourself is constantly working on growing. It's constantly taking that journey. It's never saying, "Oh, I've arrived. I'm here. I am perfect as I am. There's no need for me to work on anything else." It's recognizing that that's an ongoing journey to continue to work on yourself because you're not perfect. I think that's part of the secret sauce right there. Yeah. That we've figured out how in our minds to settle that place of like, well, I'm I'm on a path of endless development, right? For lifelong growth. The idea essentially is like create a life that you don't need a vacation from. Exactly. Like we create these lives. It's the unhappy dream. And we're like, I just need a vacation to escape from my terrible existence. Right. And and I want to stop like, wait a minute, why do you have a terrible existence? Exactly. Now, to to be totally transparent with you guys, like we there were huge sections of our lives where it was a horrible existence. Yeah. I would literally get sick to my stomach on Sunday night thinking about going back to work on Monday because I hated the job I had so badly. I mean, it was so miserable, right? So, we know what it's like. We're not We've been there at the time. I I felt like I was doing all that I could to provide for the family. Really, what I was just operating with my own within the bounds of my own ignorance and my limited skills. I didn't I didn't know differently. And you didn't know what you didn't know either. Exactly. So my ignorance was making me blind and your limitations and I was working so hard inside of ignorance. Man, that's an important point because you can just grind and grind and grind and just think I'm doing everything I can. Right? When we talk about these kind of things, it sounds like we're saying do more, do more, do more, do more. Like non-stop, just do more. telling you I'm trying to teach you how to do these things but to do them now with a power tool. So before you're using the hammer and the nail and you're doing one at a time and it's taking forever and we're like no use a nail gun and now you can put in 100 nails in the time it used to take you to do 10. So you've literally 10xed your results with the same amount of effort essentially. So, not only are you you're doing the work, but you're getting more of the results, which makes doing the work worth it. I think where people struggle, and obviously this makes a lot of sense, is when you feel like you're making a lot of effort and seeing nothing for it. You're not seeing any results. That sucks. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about doing the things that actually make a difference, that actually get the results. We have gotten to the point where nearly every moment of our life is productive in some way or the other. Right? Another key is that we switch off the activities we're doing which help us to maintain productivity. So, you know, we might take a break and it looks like we're scrolling on our phone or we're doing whatever, but we're learning a language or we're studying marketing or we're, you know, like we're using those rest moments to be productive in other ways so that we don't have wasted time like not even a wasted minute. The way I describe this for coaching clients is that we're either fully engaged or strategically disengaged. Yes. But I think even the distinction there is that the disengagement is a different form of productivity because that's a technique that people that you can learn to use where say if you're doing a lot of computer work if you then now go outside and pull weeds that's a strategic disengagement from focused computer work but you're still being productive. They call it focused thinking versus diffused thinking. So using techniques like that, we're able to make progress in multiple goals throughout the day by switching between focused and diffused thinking. Sometimes people will ask us like they'll ask me like should I have lots of goals or one goal? And and generally my advice is that just have a couple of goals that you can focus on because people aren't used to h working on multiple goals at a time. But in our family we work on multiple goals at a time. And we have we have a variety of targets and we're pursuing them simultaneously. But the difference I think is that we have those, but they're all in different areas. So we've got marriage goals that we're working on. So when we spend time together, it's not just like, well babe, let's sit down and watch TV together or something. Not that we may not do that, but it's that we're intentional about our time together to focus on moving our marriage forward. Same with our time with our kids. same with our time with homeschooling. So all of the different areas of life have different goals and aims that we're pursuing. And so it's very specific. It's very strategic. It's not just oh well I get up today and just go from thing to thing to thing to thing putting out fires responding to what's happening. That is also exhausting but without producing the results that you want. Yes. Exactly. And so then that's where people fail cuz they're like, "Well, yeah, I want different results. I want this. I want that. I want, you know, whatever thing, but I'm so busy. But I'm already so busy. I'm already so exhausted." I'm like, "Yeah, if you learn to be more strategic with your energy, then you could get the results you want. You would feel better about yourself. You would feel better about what you're doing. And you could continue that process again and again to continue getting more and more results." Yeah. Yeah. I love this because, you know, as as I just kind of stop and break it into this into this particular framework we're talking about, I'm you and I are easily working on six to 10 goals per day and it's fun. It's enjoyable. It makes for an excellent life. And I know some of you are like, "Oh man, that sounds exhausting, overwhelming, and how do you keep track of it all and oh, I'm just I'm just trying to make it through the day." And I guess that's one of our points is like stop waking up to try to make it through the day. Is that your target is to make it through the day. Your target is to survive. No way. Get up and have some targets and deliberately move progressively through the day because you're going to love it and and you're going to love the journey of it. You're going to love the process. So we get up, we work out crazy hard. We're we're in great shape. We're very healthy and we work out super hard. Do I always feel like working out hard? Nope. I often get in the gym like, man, I don't feel like working out. And then I get working out and I'm still I'm still wrestling often in my mind through the workouts like I I need to push harder. I don't feel like pushing harder. I like I'm tired and sore and like I don't I don't want to do this. But then I always think and and maybe this is one of the key takeaways today for those of you listening. I I read this quote. I probably said it when I found it. The chief cause of failure and unhappiness in life is giving up what you want most for what you want in the moment. And I think that's where most of us are failing. Well, I've heard you say it a different way. I I'm probably going to get this quote wrong actually because you say something about most people are interested in pleasing methods, but you're interested in pleasing results. like you want the results where most people are focusing on like oh I don't feel like this or this doesn't feel good or it's so much effort and so they don't do it but then of course because the method is uncomfortable. Yeah. The method's uncomfortable and so then of course well they don't have the results because they're not willing to go through the discomfort of doing the thing that gets the results. And yeah I mean that is a major difference. or we're willing to push through discomfort to do the work that brings the results. Now, going back to something you mentioned before about where like yeah, it just seems so exhausting. It seems so how do you keep track of it all? How do you stay on top of it? How do you stay motivated, energized? And to be honest, like we have not been at this level our entire lives or married lives like like we mentioned before, you know, we've we've been there. We've struggled. We've been broke. We've been unproductive. We've been lost and confused and not getting the results we want. We've been there. And there definitely is this process of training yourself to remember that you have goals, right? and to remember to work on them and to remember to be more productive and to not get distracted on YouTube or Facebook for hours, you know, there's all of these things that like it takes time to implement all of the pieces of the puzzle to say, you know, so to say, so that you can get to this level of productivity. I got to pause it. That's where that's why coaching, real coaching, real life coaching from people who have the results you want, that's where it's powerful because you can collapse time, right? So, the reason it took us so long to create the changes is because we didn't have coaches. We didn't have mentors. We were trying to figure this out. Read a few books. We're figuring out how in the world do you make this happen? And we figured it out. So, now in our coaching, the coaching that you do and the coaching that I do, that's what we do. Well, even like your 90day fitness challenge, it's starting, right? I'm I'm taking 20 seven years or more of of fitness and health study and and my own experimentation like I I was the guy that like no I got to have a gym membership at the best gym with all the equipment and all the stuff and things and that's how I can stay in great shape. And then we got this crazy idea to go wander the earth with our kids with no gym membership. And I get out there, I'm like, "Oh, there's no gyms here." Instead of making a declarative statement of like, "I have to give it up." I just start asking questions like, "Wait a minute. How could I stay in great shape even without a gym?" Like, I'm traveling anywhere in the world. I have no idea what kind of equipment I'm going to have, if any. How can I stay in great shape? And I figured it out. Like, how can I make sure we eat healthy food, right? Or I'm just We're just going to have to eat whatever's available. And that was our thing at first and I'm like, "No, I'm not playing that game either." And so over all these years, we've figured out and absolutely dialed in family health and fitness and I'm giving it to them in the course because we have been able to maintain that. And I think that this is another good example of what we're talking about here. We didn't allow our circumstances to become an excuse of why we now couldn't have xyz outcome. You still wanted fant fantastic fitness. I am not that fit, but I have great health and I've maintained thinness, right? My form. And we did it through being very It didn't just happened by accident. That's what I'm saying. Being very very strategic, right? And so we're I'm sharing that all of it, the the food stuff and the fitness stuff. And so it's it's totally doable and it's actually way easier now because I'm giving you the tools and the leverage, right? And so the point is that if you don't have the results that you want in your life, if it's in fitness, if it's in parenting, if it's in marriage, the thing that we have learned is that the answers are out there. There are ways to get the results that you want, but you have to be intentional. You have to be motivated enough. And basic psychology teaches this where if you focus on one the thing you really want. So envisioning that outcome of what it is you want whether that's with your kids or your marriage or your health and fitness or whatever your finances. And then the other side is also allowing yourself to feel the pain like really really really feel the pain of what happens if you don't do the thing. if you continue on the path that you are on, what's going to happen? What is going to be that outcome? And you and I, I think, have gotten really good at that where we can see, and in fact, it's I think it's key to our parenting strategies as well. I think it's key to why we've been so successful as parents is because we are able to clearly see the long-term outcomes of certain actions and behaviors and we intervene quickly. Okay. So, basically, I think there's six major categories. Um, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, financial. And I want you to just take a moment and and just kind of go through each of those and and it'd be great to just pause this and do some writing or do it later on. Do it do it yourself, do it with your spouse, maybe even do it with your older kids, but really just kind of walk through your life and be like, "What?" And I think the easiest place to start is what I don't want. That's where we started. That's where I started because often you're like, "What do you want?" And I'll ask clients, I'm like, "What is it you want most?" like honestly I don't know. I'm like what do you want this to look like? What do in 5 years from now, three years from now, 10 years, 20 years from now, what do you want? They're like, I don't I don't know. What's your dream? What's your goal? I don't know. That's the most common answer I get. So, start going through this stuff. Start with what you don't want. Well, okay, because you mentioned that. And first of all, this is a process we've done again and again and it's not like one something you do once and that's it. Like, it's an ongoing thing where you're constantly and I love to do it at least once a year. sometimes even more like what what do I want? But very often we know we can get to what we want by starting with what we don't want because many people that's an easy question to answer which then interestingly ties into what we were talking about before where people feel like I need to be contented and grateful but they still know what it is they don't like about their life. That's that's where all even if they might not bring it up because it feels like they're complaining or whatever, you need to bring it up. You need to talk about what it is you don't like about your life. What don't you like about your marriage? What don't you like about your kids? What don't you like about the relationships you have? What don't you like about your finances? you know, get specific about those things and actually write them down and think about them because then that's where you can now move into the space of how could I put an end to this or how could I get a different result or how could I change this and it's so powerful that process in my experience of all the people I work with that process comes quickly because you say okay what don't you want physically once you get clear about what you don't want it it's much easier to get clear about what helps you then identify what it is you do want because then you can switch that and you can say okay I want to be strong and lean and now you have an actual target right because one of you know if we really want to get into the specifics of all of this that if you constantly focus on what it is you don't want you actually in a way attract more of what you don't want right and so it can be tricky it's a great starting point but you can't stay there you have to switch to what it is you actually do want. Some people are more motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and others are motivated by the avoidance of pain. Yeah. And for me particularly, I I guess I like both, but remembering the pain, the painful outcome, the like all I have to think about is like, hey man, if I don't if I don't keep striving to be my best self, I'm going to live a mediocre life. And to me, that is appalling and unacceptable. Yeah, it is. It's knowing that like I I will not live a mediocre existence. There it is. That's what I don't want. What do you want? I want to live an extraordinary life. What does that look like? So, I start detailing it out. And then I start put piecing together the formula. And and we get into this is what we do in our coaching. This is why we have our programs, why I have a tribe, what why you have your your challenge for for moms, especially for the an extraordinary family life. But today's episode is is really asking the hard question of like, well, if you want that, why don't you have it? Why don't you? And please do this. Please ask the hard question. Look yourself in the mirror, literally or figuratively, and say, "Why don't I have what I actually want? Why isn't my marriage where I want it to be? Why isn't my body in the condition that I want it to be? Why aren't my kids and my relationship with them, why isn't that where it needs to be or I want it to be? Why aren't my finances?" Yes. Why do I feel like I have to escape from either into my phone or into Netflix or on a vacation or in meditation? Like if you have to meditate to escape from your unhappy dream like don't get more into meditation, get into fixing your unhappy dream, right? Gosh, stop tolerating that. Why? Ask that like why have you been tolerating that? Why have you been accepting that? And what's going to come up, ladies and gentlemen, are some very uncomfortable answers. Mhm. It's there's going to be a little pain here, which is good. You're going to have to face some realities. You're going to have to look look into the abyss that that Jung talked about a little bit here and realize I created this. I've tolerated this. I settled for this. Or you just say, "Well, well, why don't you have that?" Well, because it takes a lot of work. and and and then you're like, why why aren't you doing the work? And you might, you know, in in one instance, you'll be like, I've been lazy. And that's a that's a punch in the gut. Like, wait a minute. I'm exchanging what I want most for my laziness. That's a horrible exchange rate, just in case you're wondering. That's true. There is a level of truth to that. You know, we as human beings, we like comfort and we like luxury. I believe it's there on purpose. It's a force that has driven human progression. You know, without a desire for comfort and luxury, we'd still be living in caves and cooking over fires. But there is a dangerous side to it because and especially nowadays, I think in earlier times it was easier because laziness literally was life-threatening. If you didn't go out and work, if you didn't go out and plant your crops, you were likely to starve in the wintertime. So, you had to plan ahead. You had to have these goals that you were working on to keep you alive. And now you can weigh 300 lb and sit around doing video games and you don't die. Yeah. You're not going to die because you have Uber and you know, whatever. You can make money by people watching you play video games on YouTube. That's another reason why there's such a mental health crisis because humans aren't meant to exist this way. We're not meant, despite the fact that we like it, we're not meant to exist in non-stop comfort and luxury. Yep. Exactly. Well said. And that's why we have to go back to what we've been talking about, we have to be willing to put in the effort because if we don't put in the effort ourselves, the effort will be forced upon us at some point. In a very real way, effort keeps the human psyche healthy. So strain and struggle, ideally chosen, but if not chosen, forced upon us, like you said, right? It'll it'll come one way or the other. So choose strain, choose struggle, choose effort, and it'll keep you and your family healthy mentally, emotionally, physically, socially. chase well chase the challenge and I I because of our lifestyle and the way we live life by daily choosing challenge because we're choosing the challenge it automatically because I just think this is the way it's designed evolutionarily divinely it keeps at bay those other trials and tribulations absolutely right and so we have the we don't have to the sicknesses, the illnesses, the the mental illness, the depression because we are choosing challenge which keeps us healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It's building those muscles rather than having problems because of emotional and mental atrophy or spiritual atrophy. It really is like this preventative medicine. So, I'm I'm going to be lovingly but honestly blunt and frank here because you haven't been yet. I've seen it. You know, I just got to I got to ratchet it up a little bit. Warning. I've seen it too many times where people acknowledge they have results they're not happy with. They've had outcomes that honestly are unacceptable by their own standards, not by you. This isn't Greg Denning saying your outcomes are unacceptable. And then this this is where it's critical and just baffles me. Then they keep doing what they've been doing. They're like, "Yeah, you know, I I got to stop eating this garbage. It is it's killing me." And then they eat it. And again, lovingly but firmly in your face and stop doing that crap. Like for you, for your family, for your dreams, for God, stop that crap. Like if if you know there's something that's preventing you from being the best version of yourself or even just a better version, stop it. Just stop. I think that this is the key perhaps to successful living in general. If you know there's something about yourself that you need to change and then you make efforts even baby efforts baby steps where I know you're not a baby step guy but I'm saying even if you make baby steps towards changing you will feel better about yourself just in that little 100% that little small way and as you continue to do that step by step by step heading in the right direction you will continue to feel better about yourself and that just grows and it spirals upwards. But it's when we know we should change something about ourselves and then we don't and we don't and we don't. That's when we feel worse and worse and worse. So the real key here to making those changes is when you feel that inner knowing, when you admit to yourself that, hey, there's this thing that I need to change. There's this thing I need to stop doing. You you have to start using your own intuition. And you have to start practicing that by just saying, "Okay, what do I do? What's the one small step I could take now to change that or just one giant leap, right? Whatever it is you feel like is the thing that you I love how Jordan Peterson says it. He says, "What is the thing that you know you should do and that you will do?" Because there's things you know you should do, but you're like, "I I can't even touch that. That's so far away. What's the thing you know you should do and that you will do it? And that might be as simple as something like, I'm going to throw away these Oreos. We love to pick on Oreos, don't we, babe? I'm going to just go over right now and apologize to my spouse or I'm going to go tell my kid I love them. It's just the one little thing that you know you can you should do and you can do right now and it feels good. You like yourself and it starts creating better results. Exactly. And then you just do that moment after moment, day after day. That's really all it comes down to. I mean, if there's anything that we've done, that's it. It's just moment after moment saying, "What is the one thing I can do that I should do that I will do right now to move me one step closer to this outcome that I want or one step away from this outcome I don't want?" And I know what what like totally transformed our lives is when we we just said kind of okay I'll hold off like what has to be done here? Mhm. What do we have to do? What price do we have to pay? And we had to invest. We had to invest money that we didn't have. We had to make efforts and commitments that we didn't know if we could keep or not. Like we had to put some skin in the game. There are sacrifices you're going to have to make to become the new you. to move forward towards what you actually want. You are going to have to make sacrifices. Now, it can start with the baby steps for sure, but as you continue progressing and it will get easier. You'll know you have that inner knowing of what you need. And ultimately, that's the key. Yes, coaching is powerful. You need coaching, but it's all in the name of helping you to develop your own intuition so that you can listen to the things you need to make the most progress on your unique path. I think that's important distinction. That's what I do in my coaching. I just ask them what they what they know they need. And then where the power comes in is giving them the tools and the accountability to actually follow through and make it happen. Because that's where, you know, we can all say, "Wow, I'm just going to do this on my own. I'm going to save the money or whatever. I'll do it on my own." And it's it ends up so many things so many transformations are way harder than they need to be and slower than they need to be. Way slower than they need to be. And it's worth like going back to the power tools and the nail gun. It's worth investing in the power tools to save time and effort, right? Because then you get the results and you keep progressing upward towards just the best version of yourself. Well, and that's I think that's another another huge benefit with the coaching is because you have someone there because people think by speaking like when you can speak with someone that's a great form of thinking through and solving problems. And so having a coach to talk to to think through the problems is huge for problem solving and moving ahead because most people get stuck and they don't know what to do and they never talk to anyone about it who can actually help them. That's also a big difference. And so they never come up with the solution that helps them move ahead. And you know, even with your 90-day challenge, because you know that part of the plan is you meet with them every single week in a group so that they can talk because you already know they're going to come up against obstacles and challenges and roadblocks. How do you move through them? Well, you talk through it with someone who knows the path and can give you advice and help you find your solutions and and and know what the next step for you to take will be. Yep. This stuff is so powerful. I love it. So hopefully you guys, this is as we've thought through, talked through and thought about lots of different aspects here. The goal is for each of us to live our own unique dream life. Yeah. To live a life that we absolutely love. That at the end of the day, you're laying down just filled with gratitude for your life. And then the next morning you wake up early to an opportunity clock like yes I don't even wake up to an without one ideally that's how amazing my life is. I never have to wake up to an alarm clock. I hate alarm clock. You just get up and be like I have another day of life. If you're if you're not in that condition right now our invitation and and challenge even is you design and create your your ideal life. Well, and like we talked about, this episode is about identifying why you're not there. What is holding you back? What are the things about your life that you still don't like? And instead of just acquiescing to that, stop making excuses for them and making excuses for it and being quote unquote content with it. Our viewpoint here, our challenge is that you actually find more happiness in life by refusing to be content with the circumstances you don't like. And that seems counterintuitive. You know that like, oh, we're just supposed to accept things and be happy with them. No, you're not supposed to do that. You find more joy, more happiness, more purpose, more meaning in life by refusing to tolerate and settle for the things you don't like about your life. Boom. That's crazy. But it's true. So true. Amen. I just want to applause and give you standing ovation and a big kiss. That was awesome. Okay. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. Reach upward.

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