#50 Two Simple, Life-Changing Habits to Bring Joy, Purpose & Meaning to Life

Rachel Denning (00:06.51)
Hey guys, this is Greg Denning and you are in the school of awesome sauce where I share with you amazing stories and strategies to help you live an extraordinary life.

Rachel Denning (00:24.046)
Good morning my friends. I want to share two simple habits that have totally changed my life and had a positive influence. And I did them again this morning and just feeling, feeling the, the power of simple habits. Number one is get up early. And yes, it can be challenging and it can be hard those nights when we're up late or we don't sleep well and you're exhausted. And you know, you don't have to be 100 % on this, but.

as often as you possibly can get up early and train your body to get up, train your mind to get up and then get up on purpose. Get into something productive and valuable. Get up and move, move your body. There's, there's three things we should do every morning. We should move our bodies, like get that body moving and just get the blood flowing. It feels so good. Just even if it's just to get out and walk, but best case scenario, if you can get out and get a good vigorous workout, we should spend some time.

I'll call it meditating, moving and meditating, right? The M's. Meditating, just pondering on things, writing, thinking, just evaluate what you want to work on that day and what you want to work on in life. So spend some time thinking about who it is you want to be. Because look, people who are really rocking it, like they're high performers, they're go -getters, they're achievers, they're truly successful, not just rich or successful in certain areas.

genuinely truly successful. They know who they are. They are they're clear about who they are. They're clear about how they treat people and they're clear about what they're doing with their lives and where they're going. So spend some time pondering on that writing on that. It's a great time to rewrite your your top goals every morning literally rewrite them. It takes 10 seconds. Rewrite your top goals and write about your thoughts and impressions your desires write down what you're grateful for. I mean if you just spent a few minutes.

writing each morning, it literally would make a tremendous difference in your day. And of course, how our days go is how our life ultimately goes. And so spend some time meditating. And then, the, the last thing, the third thing we just have to do is we have to spend some time, consuming. I gotta come up with a better word, an word or something. We got to feed yourself, right? You got to,

Rachel Denning (02:50.349)
Maybe medicate, right? It's the other Medicate your mind. No, no, like, I'm just joking there. You gotta learn some things. You gotta consume books. Get in sacred texts and get in great books and read from awesome things as we do, you know, as you are wanting to improve your life. Well, here, let me, I got a bunch of ideas on this. My mind is just filled with these.

ideas and impressions right now. Like you should study anything you want to be good at. Study it. Does that make sense? Like anything you want to excel in, anything you want to improve in your life, study it. Study like crazy. And anything that you have a role in, like if you're a parent, you study parenting. It's your role and you should be really great at it. If you're married, you study marriage. If you have relationships, and we all do,

We should study relationships. If you want better health, study health. Whatever it is you want to improve it. You want to be a better learner. You want to be a better leader. Like whatever it is, study it. Study it voraciously and let it improve your life as you learn and study. And so this morning I'm teaching a class for youth. One of the...

So I do the mentoring for youth. I have these youth classes and they're just incredible. They're life changing. And I'm doing a couple of different classes right now. They just started. So you may not even want to jump in these. One of them is called Habits for a Successful Life. And we're studying these fantastic personal development books. And that's one of the things we should all be studying is personal development. And then I'm doing a special one that I love because it just transformed.

my life. It's lessons from wartime literature. And so we're reading these great books, The Hiding Place is the first one. And so I'm rereading that. And that book changed my life when I was 16, 17, living on my own. And Corrie Tenbohm, you know, was one of my mentors, one of my first mentors through her book. I read her book and she taught me, she instructed me about how to see life and how to do things. And just rereading those chapters again this morning.

Rachel Denning (05:15.597)
which is so powerful, so transformational. I mean, that book is world -class, phenomenal. So please read it or reread it. Get a copy today. Start it on again. It's a quick, powerful, easy, wonderful, enjoyable read. And you just want to keep turning the pages because it's so touching. And she tells this beautiful story. And then she drops these little lines or paragraphs that are so powerful. Like,

like transformational the little lessons about her home life. And she said, you know, that our home was the happiest home in Holland.

And she just gives these little insights to how her parents lived and how they took care of other people. How her father, the wisdom of her father, just understanding the hard things of life and the gentleness and the wisdom and the love he had and how they raised their own children. Then he raised all these other orphan children. They always fed anyone and everyone that needed something. They always cared for people.

They were just full of love and kindness. There was absolutely no separation or division or segregation in their hearts or in their minds. In fact, she said her father just refused. He couldn't even see the differences in people. He loved all people the same. And more, I could go on and on. I mean, we could spend... I could do several episodes here of just the lessons in the first few chapters of that incredible book.

But will you do that with me, friends? Will you do it for yourself and for your family, for the people you need and want to serve and love and lead? Get up early. Do those three things we talked about. Get up early. And then do those things. Move your body. Do some thinking and some writing. And do some reading and some listening. Listen to audiobooks. Great podcasts like this. You're doing it right now. And...

Rachel Denning (07:24.141)
and great books and just those simple habits have the power to totally transform your life. So start today. Do it. If you need a book list, I've got a book list. Shoot me a message. Shoot me an email. I've got a great book list. Read a well over a thousand books and I put together ones that I thought were the most impactful, most helpful, most powerful, but just start, get a book, start with hiding place.

And then do Man's Search for Meaning. That's the other one we're doing in the wartime literature. And then End There Was Light. And then we're doing Four Feathers, just in that one. And then in the other one, we're doing the five major pieces of life puzzle, which is so good. We're doing high performance habits. We're doing the majesty of calmness. And we're doing Talent is Overrated.

And so get you guys get in a book discussion too. You haven't, you haven't really read a book until you've discussed it. In fact, I had to do an episode on how to read a book because I'm actually going through, I went through one by Harold Bloom, how to read a book and why, and then how to read a book by Mortimer Adler. And they both stand, they both hold the position that the vast majority of college graduates still do not know how to adequately read a book. Whoa. Right? Wow. Both same. So you guys,

Spend some time reading and thinking and pondering and writing. And these are simple habits. They don't take that long. It's a little extra effort, but again, do hard things, right? When we do hard things, it blesses our lives. It makes us stronger and better. Get up early, spend time with great books, and then share, share what you learned and discuss it. And those simple habits will bring so much joy and happiness and wisdom and understanding and insight into our lives and give us direction and vision and...

Motivation, inspiration, encouragement. it's a huge, wonderful, beautiful habit that's made a gigantic positive difference in my life. Love you guys. Awesome is always an option. Reach upward.

Rachel Denning (09:36.045)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of it and found some things that you can apply to your life right away. Hey, I'm being totally sincere when I say I live to help you live your extraordinary life. So I hope you'll reach out to me if you have any questions or let me know how I can help you in any important area of your life. And in fact, you know, this podcast is brought to you by the School of Awesome Sauce monthly coaching program. Take advantage of that, get in there. It's the

best way to get a breakthrough to the next level so you can level up your health, your spirituality, your emotions, your mind, your relationships, your finances, business, every part of your life. Just get in there where you have a coach and a mentor, you have a supportive community to make things happen. So jump in there, take advantage of this, try it out, get in there with us and level up your life. See you on the inside. Reach upward.