#69 How To Start Your Days With Power

Rachel Denning (00:01.294)
Hey my friends, welcome to the extraordinary family life podcast. man, it is early in the morning right now. I am still waking up. So hopefully I can keep back the yawning and get this thing going. You guys, it is so important to get up and get moving, especially

if you have a family, at least that's been my experience that boy, when I realized how many, when I realized how many children I have, I realized how much I wanted to do in life, right? And I had to, I had to show up. I have to show up for my family, for you, for the other people I serve. here comes the yawn. man. sorry, it's early.

And all the things I wanted to do, right. And all the things I wanted to accomplish, I realized quickly that if I wanted to be productive and I wanted to be effective and I wanted to be efficient, I had to get up. And I realized that if I wanted to fill, cause you can't, you guys, you can't draw water from an empty well, right?

You can't give if you don't have. And a lot of us are running on empty. You know what I'm talking about? There's a lot of demands being made on you from spouses and children and parents and siblings and neighbors and friends and community and the world and people you work with, people you work for. There's a lot of demands on us and even from yourself, right? And your own standards.

So we've got to be able to replenish. We've got to be able to fill our reservoir so we have something to give.

Rachel Denning (02:11.886)
And man, it is so important to fill that every single day without fail. And I know some days are insane and you'll only have just a couple of minutes to refill. But even on those days, those few minutes will be pivotal.

and essential to you showing up the way you need to show up, being your best.

And again, for me and for so many people, the way to get this done is in the morning. Now, you're like, but I'm not a morning person. that was another yawn. And you might be saying, look, I'm not a morning person.

And to that I respond, I don't know that anyone is a morning person, but we train ourselves to get up. We train ourselves to get up, right? Now it gets easier. It gets a lot easier with training. And so it gets like you practice getting up, right? And you keep getting up and you persist in getting up and your body gets trained.

Sometimes the point where you're actually, your body will get going even before your alarm goes off. And so you can, I don't know how this works. This is so, it seems like magic, but you can train your mind and body to wake up. And then all of a sudden your body will just start popping up before the alarm goes off and you wake up and you're like, what's going on? And you look at it and it's just right before your alarm. It's amazing. it's amazing. But it comes with training. That happened to me this morning.

Rachel Denning (04:08.014)
But so let me say this, it gets easier, but I don't know that it actually gets easy. Let that sink in. Doing hard things, persisting in doing the things you know you need to do gets easier, but I don't think it ever gets easy. There might be some things that you practice and you become so effective at it. So your competence is so awesome. That's actually.

It's and there are some things to do that. But when we're when we're doing just hard things Hard things are hard. Haha, right? Yeah, you're like, okay, that's the simplest idea ever But it's a just a profound truth hard things are hard They don't get easy. So even this morning getting up, you know, I've been doing this for years and years and years getting up was hard I woke up right my body woke up before the alarm

and your mind starts to play tricks on you. So I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a trick here. Ready? This will save you so much, so much pain in the process and even regret. so I, I did, I decided this years ago with my college roommate, we were getting up at four and it was hard. And we just were noticing that your mind will like become your

Enemy in the first thing in the morning and says to you. Come on. You're just gonna lay here just for a minute. You're just you're not going back to bed You're just gonna rest your eyes. You're just gonna think for a second You're gonna lay here and and ponder right and we're gonna do we're gonna do a quick meditation in bed before we get up You know these lies, right? You know these lies and the mind will tell you all kinds of funny things and so

We realized that I kind of made a rule. You're not allowed to make decisions in the first, you know, several minutes, maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Well, how does that work then? You have to decide the night before.

Rachel Denning (06:23.502)
Right. And maybe even decide once and for all that every single morning, no matter what you get up and you do certain things. So it requires no thinking, no decision making. You get up, you do the thing. Period. And that has worked so well for me. It has worked so well for me. And so for the last 20 some odd years,

I've been getting up early. I still, I wish I had been doing the 4 a but I have not been doing that. And I'll have my mornings where I sleep in till 6. DERR! It drives me crazy. Because, and here's why. It's because, like, I want to start my days with power. Because I have to.

I have to in order to be a great husband and a great father and a great leader, I've got to get up and work on greatness. Right? I'm constantly pursuing greatness. This is, it's a never ending pursuit. We're on this quest. So we're growing and learning and progressing. We just keep on going. And in order to be great, in order to pursue greatness, I got to get up. I get it going.

And so you get up and you move your body. Okay, here's the second strategy, right? Move your body. Because when you move your body, you alter your mind. That is powerful. So whenever you're feeling down or dreary or lazy or tired, move your body. And you can do this throughout the day. We do it with our kids. We've been doing it with our kids for a while. We'll turn on some dance music. We'll all just dance around.

We have a few songs that are just our go -to songs that we just every time that comes on you just feel great you start dancing around and moving and And you can do this at any time, right? So if you're if you're sitting throughout the day We fact this the research shows we ought to be popping up every 45 to 60 minutes We ought to be moving our bodies. So if you're sitting a lot during the day You know, you're just pretty Pretty sedentary life, which is is you know, that's our society for most of us

Rachel Denning (08:51.79)
Some of you are moving all the time because you're out working with, you're working in construction, you're working with wood, you're working with people, you're traveling, you're moving, you're just all over the place. But some of us, we sit a lot. And man, we gotta move. So moving your body will alter your mind. Remember that. Just drill that in your head. Move your body, it'll alter your mind. So get up, move around. Do some arm...

cross your body, swing your arms, slap your legs, and just do this. Do it anywhere, do it everywhere, do it on a long flight. Get up, slap your legs, slap your body, move around. Anytime, and here's the magic. Anytime you feel, you're thinking or feeling negative, right? Any negativity, anything that's down, anything you're struggling with, move, move. Now,

A lot of us are in this perpetual self -sabotage because we're not moving our bodies enough. In fact, we're not even carrying our bodies well. You know, we're kind of, we got our shoulders kind of rolling forward, got our heads down a bit, we got poor posture. We're just, we're kind of slumping through life. That dramatically affects the way we feel. And we have a slump.

feeling because we're living a slumped life and a lot of it is literally just the way we carry our bodies because what you do with your body affects what you do with your mind. yeah. What you do with your body affects what you do with your mind. So move your body and so first thing in the morning get up and move walk around you don't you have to some of you will step into your running shoes and head out the door right some of you need to

Go a little bit slower, but get up and move. Just get up and walk around for a minute and let your body wake up. I'll give you some strategies here for a powerful morning, right? The way to start the day. Because again, and you've heard me say this, the way you start your day ultimately determines the way your days go. Like you, and you're like, whatever. I still have to go to this, do this and that. I promise you, you start with some powerful mornings. Your days start to change.

Rachel Denning (11:19.63)
I do this with all my clients. I do this with all the people I coach. I've been teaching this for years, decades actually, because I've been doing it for decades. I've been morning rituals that I've been following and practicing for over 20 years. And if you'll do this, it gives you power, right? So get up, move your body around, get some water. So I get up, I start walking and I go get some water. Boom! And you get about 16 ounces of water. That actually increases your metabolism.

Yeah, which is good, right? And then it starts to wake you up Then then I always I'm just gonna give you just little tips and tricks here. I Get some greens first thing in the morning I drink some water and I just get a scoop of Natural greens, right? So it's just what it is is just dehydrated green vegetables in a powder form So I take a scoop of those because you got it

You gotta get some greens in your life. And that's the easy way to just get a boost of greens right in the morning. And then I eat some Brazil nuts because Brazil nuts are actually really good for men for raising testosterone levels, a good thing. Right? And so then I get into my morning routine and I get going. Now I'm not gonna tell you guys about the whole morning routine because I actually, I did that years ago.

I outlined my entire morning, right? The whole morning ritual and routine and how to do it in effective ways to make it happen. And it's in this recording that I created. It's called How to Totally Transform Your Life Before Breakfast. don't you love that? How to totally transform your life before breakfast. Because you actually, you and I, we have that power to

Transform our lives before breakfast and that's by doing a morning ritual and routine and learning how to do it effectively and well it is powerful and you can you go find that on gregdenning .com or Worldschoolacademy .com both places go get it. It's cheap. It's powerful The people who get it to them is like it changes the way they do life. It is so powerful but I tell you this I introduce this because

Rachel Denning (13:45.422)
This is part of your extraordinary family life formula, right? It's part of your pursuit of greatness. It's part of helping yourself.

Some of you.

Some of us, because I do this too when I'm off my game, I'm actually making life harder on myself. And here's the crazy part, sometimes you don't even know you're doing it.

You don't even know that you're making life hard for you.

Rachel Denning (14:24.814)
man, have I ever been there? Right? man, I used and you know, what's funny is all I'm confident that there are still things that I don't know about that I'm rolling along and realizing, man, and I'll realize as I learn it, right? I was holding myself back, right? But there are things that that I used lots of things I used to do. They were actually

I mean adding weights to my ankles.

and just, just laboring along or you felt like you're trying to run in waist deep water and not getting anywhere. There were things that I was doing that I didn't know that were making it so much harder on myself.

and not having a morning routine and ritual, just sleeping in and just getting up and going right into your stuff, that is one of those things. That will sabotage your efforts. That will make your life more difficult, I promise. And if you're sitting here listening going, that's what I do, life's pretty good, you are missing out, my friend. If you're doing that, you're not even.

close to tapping your potential. Because extraordinary performers, right? The people who are just rocking it in the most important areas of life, they get up and get going into the right things in the right way. They move their bodies, they activate their minds, they read great things, they have rituals and routines that get them going.

Rachel Denning (16:15.278)
And again, now I know some of you are like, I can't do that, I have kids. But for me personally, I have to say, I have to do that because I have kids. I gotta find this quiet space where I can get interrupted, where I know no one's gonna wake up. No one's gonna be interrupting me. And so I'm like, I remember thinking through this, like, hey, when's it absolutely quiet? Because at night time sometimes the kids will stay up or get up.

talking to my spouse or something. Right? Look, when is this going to happen? I realized, early mornings, early mornings are sacred time where I can get up and I can focus on reenergizing and empowering my mind and my emotions and my actions where I can prepare for the day where I can.

get the training, the skills, the mindset where I can power up.

We've got to do this and do it in a special powerful way. But this requires my friends, I've failed to mention this, this doesn't work if you're not sleeping well.

This is actually one of the things that will help you sleep better is getting up early and just like having that routine to get up early. That'll actually, it'll transform the way you sleep and you'll start sleeping better. But if you have really bad habits at night, like if you're staying up late, which I'm, you know, after working with thousands and thousands of people all over the world, I'm gonna guess that most of you listening fit in that category of doing things before bed that are not serving you.

Rachel Denning (18:07.566)
Because I just see all that whenever I go speak. I'm like, okay, wait, what are you guys doing at night? And they're like, that's me. I'm staying up late. I'm on my phone. Just messing around looking at things watching movies, like introducing all this media into our heads that messes with our heads and our bodies. Right. And so we have these really unhealthy evening routines that are keeping us up late.

And for the vast majority of people, they admit to, well, it's keeping me up late, but it's not really helping me. It's not like super meaningful. It's not like fantastic. It's just, this is kind of, you know, entertainment or just kind of passing the time. Right. And so again, we're, we're in these, you guys see that you've, you sense that and I don't, I'm not guilt tripping. You don't only feel bad. Well, I kind of want you to feel bad. I want you to feel bad enough to change.

Because there are times that we should feel bad because that feeling will actually drive us to change. There's lots of times I feel bad. If I do something that's not serving me or serving others, I'm wasting time, wasting life, I feel bad about it. And I let that bad feeling, I use that bad feeling to propel me like, I feel bad about that. I don't want to do that anymore. I hate that feeling. I want to feel good. And so I change. And so if you've got some evening routines that are throwing you off, change those up.

I promise my friends, get up, get moving, get going. It is the best thing you can do for yourself. It's one of the best things you can do for the people you love and people want to serve.

Can I, can I be just?

Rachel Denning (19:51.63)
really real with you right here.

Rachel Denning (19:56.206)
You have unbelievable potential.

You have possibilities all around you.

Rachel Denning (20:10.19)
and you're not accessing them.

Rachel Denning (20:14.734)
and you're not tapping into potential. And I, look, I know you have that. Even if I don't even know you personally, and there's so many of you I don't, but I know you have it. Because that's the kind of person you are, that's how your creator created you with potential and power and possibilities.

You've got things to do, places to go, awesome things to achieve, people to impact. You have so much power and potential, so much that's possible for you. Let that drive you. Turn on those powers, access them by getting up, making it happen, and making your mornings.

count. So get up, move that body and alter that mind and tap into that potential, prepare yourself, fill that well, you know, get, get filled back up. So you're ready each morning. Like by the time you, by the time you're ready to go into your day, you've already hit your priorities and you're, you are fired up. You're filled up. You are ready to roll and make it happen. Yes. Let's get up and do this.

Grab that course. It'll help you. It'll outline everything you need to do and help you get in the routine and the habit of it. And it gets easier. It gets better. It may not ever be easy, but it gets easier. And when you do that, you set yourself up for success. You guys awesome is always an option. Reach upward.

Rachel Denning (22:05.294)
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, this podcast is brought to you by the school of awesome sauce monthly coaching program. Take advantage of that. Get in there. If 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.