#82 BEWARE These Pirates & Hijackers That Rob You of Focus, Freedom, & Joy

Rachel Denning (00:01.614)
Good morning, my friends. Good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I hope it's good. I hope you're having a fantastic day. And if not, you are in the right place. We can turn that around. In fact, take a pause right now. Just wherever you are. If you're having a fantastic day or if you're having a cruddy day, just take a pause here. Take a deep breath and just choose. Choose to be present. Choose to be more deliberate. Choose to take back.

control of your thoughts and your emotions and The person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live And isn't that amazing we have that power all the time Then we get to choose the course in our lives right as There's a great poem called Invictus

that he talks about in the back. I could quote the whole thing for me. I memorized it with my family. But in the last part he says, I am the captain of my soul and I am the master of my fate. I love that. I love that idea of like, yes, like take charge of your ship and your life and take control. We're gonna talk about that today. But it's interesting, this morning, I've been up since 3 .30 again.

man, kind of love hate when that happens because you have a lot of hours, but then you're like, man, I'm tired. But get on it. I'm actually feeling really live and energized and I've been reading all kinds of great stuff and writing and thinking and it's interesting. So recently, well, three kind of three experiences kind of fit together. I was, I was recently asked to give a presentation about goals and goal setting and achieving our best and really just kind of leveling up.

And we talked about, you know, the holistic areas of life. You don't want to just focus on one area. We get lopsided as human beings. And so we're talking about, you know, focusing on the mental, emotional and the spiritual and the social and the physical. And of course the financial and like fitting it all together to making the most of ourselves. And so that's been on my mind. And specifically what we're going to talk about today is all the pirates and hijackers.

Rachel Denning (02:22.414)
that are robbing us of our life and our potential and our dreams. But to add some fuel and power to this, a young man that I had mentored for a long time, for years, just got engaged. And it just seems like last week he was, you know, 15, 16 year old kid, and we were mentoring, and now he's getting married, which is awesome and exciting and like, whoa, how did that happen? And he's starting out life.

Rachel Denning (02:54.83)
and

That's so exciting, right? So exciting to start a family, to get married and to dive into life. And then I also found out at the same time that this gentleman who, he's passed away and he's too young. He left his wife and four kids behind and on, he kind of set up a website with his obituary and...

I was watching the photos come through and I was actually surprised.

to see a picture of his family with my family in Guatemala. When he was on an overlanding trip with his family, they stopped and we had connected. And now he's gone. And all of those experiences just reminded me how important life is, how precious life is. That every day we need to be trying to live deliberately and intentionally. And not...

Not with the fear of dying or the fear of loss and not like anxious or stressed, but valuing how precious life is and how fast it's flying by. Man, before you know it, we're all gonna be hitting 100 and going, whoa, how did we get here so fast? I'm planning on pushing on to 120 myself. I'm going for it, that's my goal.

Rachel Denning (04:31.822)
So I'm only about a third of the way there, but even a third, that's a lot. And time is flying. And so let's not let life pass us by. Let's not let moments slip past where we're missing opportunities to really connect and really engage. And that's what we're talking about today. So buckle up, friends, buckle up. We're gonna get on it here. You and I have the unbelievable power.

in our minds to literally create our lives. We have the total freedom. We live in a time and a place and we were created by God to just be able to be the authors of our fate and the masters of our lives and we have the power at any moment to change them. I know we often don't think that. We get told we can't and we even tell ourselves sometimes we can't. I can't change that, blah, blah, blah. We can.

We actually have that tremendous power. And we get to live in the life that we create. We get to wear the clothes, so to speak, that our mind makes up for ourselves. We get to make our life and then live it. That's so amazing, right? We have that power to control and direct our thoughts and our feelings and our actions and our habits. And we're not, we're not,

bound, we're not arbitrarily bound in anything except by the binding we often put on ourselves. We can literally retard our growth and our progress or we can accelerate it. We can bind ourselves or we can liberate ourselves. We can form habits that

propel us forward or that hold us back. And we can break habits and put in new habits and we can blind ourselves to the truth or attach ourselves to the truth. And we can create and form the life we want. Isn't that exciting? Isn't that and intimidating? There's a ton of responsibility there. But at the end of the day, we have to take extreme ownership and say that everything in my life is what is here because I made it this way.

Rachel Denning (06:57.198)
And now your mind might be saying, well, no, wait a minute, other people treated me this way and other people did that. But for the most part, even we train others how they can treat us. It's part of our responsibility. And even if others have done things to you or at you that seem to be no part of your own doing, we always have the power. We can draw the line right now, this instant, the moment you're listening to this right now, you can draw a line and say, from here on, my life will be what I make it.

and the way you choose to respond and react to what has happened is gonna be the formation of your life, right? I love this stuff, it's so empowering that we get to be the makers and shapers of our lives. And so what you've been thinking and been doing has led you to this moment. So like everything in your life right now, you've kind of created it and made it that way. And the good news is, well, okay.

The tough news is sometimes you're your own problem. There it is friends. I wish I was there to give you a hug right now and be like, hey, you your own problem, my friend. You've created a lot of your own problems. The great news is you are also the solution and you can create those solutions. And if you don't know how, then your job is to find out how and then do it. But you can't.

So what I wanted to share today in context of the things I've been feeling and experiencing in this presentation I recently gave about about really setting goals and dreams and going achieving them. What's happening is that most of us are being attacked by pirates and hijackers. Right. And we need to beware. And this is my message right here friends. Beware of the piracy.

and the hijacking on your focus, on your freedom, on your path to mastery, and on your life. Many of us are letting pirates and hijackers rob us of the control of our lives. Now, sometimes it's people. We allow toxic people into our lives or...

Rachel Denning (09:24.238)
We allow too much outside influence to give us a script or an idea that limits our beliefs and our lives. And we, some of us just hand over control of our lives to other people. But it's interesting, not like in this crazy way where you're an actual slave or you've been attacked by pirates, but in like letting other people plan your agenda.

or steal it. For example, like here's a really simple one. If you get up first thing in the morning and you're checking messages and emails, you've just handed over your life to pirates and hijackers. And they're hijacking your time and attention and the best use, like your most creative potential and power to get things done. And you jump into other people's agendas and other people's goals.

Right. And one of these ways, like if we don't have our own goals, then other people will use us for theirs. right. Whoa. Let us let us sink in. So let's let's look, let's look at the pirates. Let's look at the hijackers. And we have to be careful because they are very, very cunning. And they're often so subtle. It's subtle piracy. And this really came out in in this presentation I was giving recently.

specifically we're talking about, because you guys, here's the goal. Like you wanna be optimized, right? You wanna be just weaponized so to speak where your mind is this tool and this weapon for cutting through the crap and the chaos and getting things done and your life is fully optimized, but we're being attacked by food.

You realize that the very, when somebody comes to me and this, a lot of the industry luckily is changing now and realizing this. When people come with like, I'm saying they're depressed or they're anxious or they're struggling with emotions, very many, the best coaches and counselors, the first thing they're looking at is food, food and sleep. Because we're literally being hijacked and pirated with food. And we think, here's the subtlety.

Rachel Denning (11:45.262)
A lot of the stuff that is actually masquerading as food is not food. It was created in some lab or some factory. Sorry, last time I checked, food doesn't grow in a factory. And so we're getting all these processed foods and they're putting all these chemicals in there. And from, you know, MSG to high fructose corn syrup to even food colorings and other, like other chemicals and additives and all this stuff, it's...

It's piracy, it's hijacking, and it's robbing us of our power and potential. Some of you, I fear, and a lot of people, they literally have never known what it's like to feel fully energized and alive because they've just been eating pseudo foods for so long. And if we're filling our lives and our bodies with sugar and junk, we don't even know what it's like to feel vibrant and alive.

And yes, my friends, you can study this out. There's tons of research out there. All the cool stuff with technology now, they can do brain mapping and scanning and they can watch what's happening. And what you're putting in your mouth, 20 % of it goes right to your brain and it will have an effect. So if you're pounding the sodas or whatever else, man, it's just, it's tanking our lives. And I recently did some more research. I'd done this a couple of years ago and I just wanted to check.

check up on my numbers again for this presentation, 598 ,000 people, 598 ,000 people. Holy guacamole. That's more people than live in the city of Atlanta. 598 ,000 people die every year from heart disease. And that's preventable death. Most of it is, this is just in the United States.

Most of it's connected to being overweight or obese. And it's poor exercise habits and poor eating.

Rachel Denning (13:45.838)
almost 600 ,000 people a year send themselves into the grave because of what they're eating, predominantly. I mean, exercise is a part of it too, but it's predominantly eating. Talk about pirates and hijackers and ending life and pirating life and then before you die, you suffer all kinds of limitations because your body's not where it could be.

it's just heart, it's heart wrenching. And it robs us of so much. Another 480 ,000, so again, close to half a million people die every year in the United States from the use of tobacco.

Rachel Denning (14:32.014)
So we're at, what is that? 1 .1 million people die every year from self -inflicted stuff. So sad, you guys, so sad. And so we literally are the victims of pirates and hijackers, but it's self -inflicted. And so we often create our own prisons, and we're living in per -

perpetual self -sabotage and slavery from things that are masquerading as food or here's another one entertainment

And it's out there as, yeah, I have food and entertainment, right? It's the whole bread and circuses that I've taught you guys about. I'll give you a quick refresher here if you don't remember. Bread and circuses, it was a phrase by Juvenal, that's how we say his name in English. And he was a writer and thinker just at the end of the Roman Empire. And the phrase he used was panem et circensis, which is translated bread and circuses. And it was the.

the political approach. It was a strategic political approach by two politicians who wanted to control the populace of Rome. They wanted to be able to manipulate and dictate and just get them to be docile and not resist and do what they were told. And so their strategy was give them all the food and entertainment they want and they will never resist. And so it's to take people and just lull them into a carnal security and they get them.

And so my friends, and here's the danger, here's the warning, here's my message this morning. You and I, we have to be aware and be afraid, beware the piracy and the hijacking of indulgences.

Rachel Denning (16:29.546)
of indulgences. The little things like food and sleep.

that are hijacking our lives and that these things that are masquerading as food and entertainment are robbing us of our freedom and our potential and our power. And I want to invite you and challenge you to take back your life, to take back control. In fact, on that note.

I want to invite you and challenge you to never put anything into your body that weakens your control. Wayne Dyer said that one time. He said he stopped drinking alcohol because he never wanted to have ever put anything in his body again that weakened his control. And so whether that's food or alcohol or caffeine, if you think you need alcohol to loosen up or you think you need caffeine to get going or you need to take pills all the time or whatever, never put anything into your body that...

weakens your control and I would say now don't put anything into your mind that weakens your control. We want to be fully present and in charge and a lot of us are handing over our lives to pirates and hijackers. Come experience the freedom and the energy and the joy that many of you have I'm afraid have never even experienced or known.

Come back to that. But it's the little things. It's the little things are getting us. Let me share this quote again by James Allen. This is from a book called Byways of Blessedness. And here's the biggest problem, my friends. We think that the little things don't matter, that it's not a big deal. As long as I'm not committing some big crime or sin or terrible thing, then I'm good. And we kind of get it in our heads that the good life is to kind of take it easy.

Rachel Denning (18:32.974)
You with me? Let that one sink in. We get it in our heads that the good life is to take it easy. And we work and work and work, hoping to take it easy. And man, it's like this. It's a total misconception of what it means to be really truly happy and alive and fully engaged. We think that we want comfort and ease. But if we were to step back and say, what is it that...

comfort and ease really produce? And then what is it that actually brings me true fulfillment and happiness and joy? Now I'm all about comforts, my friends, and luxuries, and that's awesome.

But if we allow too much of it, it actually robs us of our power and our fulfillment. Okay, let me show this quote, James Allen. The foolish man thinks that little faults, little indulgences, little sins are of no consequence. He persuades himself that so long as he does not commit flagrant immoralities, he's virtuous and he's even holy.

but he is thereby deprived of virtue and holiness and the world knows him accordingly. It does not reverence adore and love him. It passes him by. He is reckoned of no account. His influence is destroyed. Wow. Right? Okay. Pause on this quote here. Wow. Right? Unbelievable.

We literally lose our power of influences by the little indulgences, the little faults, the things we let slide. It removes our power and it's subtle sometimes. And we may not be able to articulate it, but you just notice like lack influence. Okay, let me keep going. The efforts of such a man to make the world virtuous, his exhortations to his fellow men to abandon their great vices are.

Rachel Denning (20:35.342)
empty of substance and barren of fruitage." I mean, there's emptiness there. There's no real power behind his message because he's allowing these little indulgences. He or she. This is for all of us. I continue with the quote. The insignificance which he attaches to his small vices permeates his whole character and is the measure of his manhood.

He is regarded as an insignificant man. Whoa! Whoa! That sentence is so powerful and so profound that our little indulgences, our little vices, the little things that we allow or even seek out or pursue, they permeate our entire character and they become the measure of our manhood or our womanhood.

And then we are therefore regarded, it just kind of radiates out to people, they may not even be able to articulate it, but it radiates out that we are insignificant. I continue with the quote, the levity with which he commits his errors and publishes his weakness comes back to him in the form of neglect and loss of influence and respect. He is not sought after, for who will seek to be taught of folly.

His works do not prosper, for who will lean upon a reed? His words fall upon deaf ears, for they are void of practice, wisdom, and experience, and who will go after an echo?" Close quote. Wow, man, you see why I love James Allen so much? Holy guacamole, that's profound. There's the message. It's the little things.

that are causing so much destruction, that are undermining power and influence and life and potential. We are literally being attacked by pirates and hijackers. And sometimes my friends, I'm gonna go through a list here of things and you'll even know more. And if we were together, we would even make a bigger comprehensive list, because you'll have ideas that I don't have here. And you'll have insights into this, but I want you to...

Rachel Denning (23:00.59)
Really think about it carefully for yourself or your spouse for your family for your children for your friends your co -workers think about it in your church congregations in in your Nonprofit organizations and in wherever you are involved think about how this is happening in the workplace in the schools wherever the little indulgences That are undermining our power For some of us it's in what we look at

you might kind of indulge in looking at something that's inappropriate. Whether it's an immodestly dressed person or a picture at one of the worst levels of pornography. Allowing those indulgences. Then it's entertaining the thoughts. Little thoughts that we indulge. Thoughts of cruelty. Thoughts of baseness, of theft, of vileness. It's even in, you know,

And the Bible, he talked about lusting after something in your thoughts in your head. It's already there. And so you guys, this is this higher level stuff I'm talking about here, but it's not even indulging in a thought or a feeling. Sometimes we indulge our feelings and we allow ourselves to feel things that we know are inaccurate and inappropriate and not helpful. But we allow ourselves to feel them anyways. Maybe it's anger, bitterness or revenge.

or envy or jealousy or greed or selfishness. We allow that sometimes it's little beliefs. We have these little beliefs that we we hang on to and we believe actually illusions or delusions or things we we want to face the facts right the facts are clear but we indulge in the in the false belief.

We do this, right? You know, we do this. Like this is this is hitting home. Because we we we hold on to these little beliefs that we know are inaccurate. We're like, well, I just want to believe that. And we want to play. Some want to play the child still there. They're fully grown up, but they want to they want to play the child and they want to shirk responsibility and they want to we want to tell ourselves these stories about why we can't do things or why we don't do things. But every time we have this little indulgence, my friends,

Rachel Denning (25:28.078)
It weakens us. It weakens our control. It weakens our power and our influence. It literally becomes a pirate and a hijacker that's taking over our lives, our focus, our determination, our discipline, our progress, our results. Many of you are not getting the results you want because you're allowing pirates and hijackers to come in, maybe in the story you're telling yourself. And it could be as subtle as, I'll get to that later, right?

or yeah, I'll change that next month or next year. That'll be different. As though something will totally transform and magically be different in two weeks from now. Or that you'll actually get to it tomorrow and not watch Netflix. Right? You with me? And so we indulge in these things and every time, and it may not even be a big deal. Let's go with this for a second. It may not even be a really bad thing, so to speak.

It might not be a negative thing where we'd look at it and say, that's bad. But here's where we undermine ourselves and we unplug our power. Whenever we do something that is less than what we are capable of, it attacks our self -confidence and our self -worth and it removes power and potential.

So even if it's not a necessarily inherently bad or evil thing, let's say, but it's just slacking off. It's just a little indulgence. It makes you feel weak and you know it. And when you reach for it, you're like, I shouldn't do that. And it robs you of power. Whoa. So what else?

Obviously food things we talked about that sleep a lot of you are indulging in staying up way too late and it's just it's it's undermining your sleep. The sleep research is out there friends and man it is it is real it's powerful I shared a lot of in this presentation that even a little bit of sleep deprivation will lower your cognitive abilities if you if like one night of sleep deprivation lowers your cognitive abilities as though you're intoxicated and a little bit of sleep deprivation.

Rachel Denning (27:52.974)
academically will lower you one grade level. Like your mind just will not function. It cannot function at the right level. And so you're indulging you're like I'm gonna stay up late you're scrolling on whatever and you're watching this movie that gave you nothing valuable and you indulge in consuming garbage media right that unending stream of visual trash that's out there.

We indulge in that, so that has an effect on us mentally and emotionally and physically. And we're indulging in it at nights, we're staying up late, we're not getting the sleep we need, and so we wake up kind of late and we're groggy, and this is all carrying over. And do you realize it's actually that indulgence for lack of sleep? I need to do an entire podcast on sleep here. I gotta do one. Because it actually affects your mind. Your memory.

Like when you when you're remembering things, you're trying to learn things. The more you're learning, the more better and more and better sleep you need. And during the right time, because during the right time of the night, you're getting to bed at 10 o 'clock during that time, your your brain actually heals and recovers and retains things. So when people are chronically sleep deprived, they can't they're not even their short term memory is weaker. They can't remember vocabulary and they actually end up this all sleep research. They actually end up.

Remembering negative things and not being able to remember positive things is unbelievable and Your body's not regenerating and so you start you literally start to feel older and You're not refreshed and you're not healing and the cells aren't getting in a healthy cellular state Right. So these little indulgences are robbing us in every way mentally emotionally physically spiritually socially

Financially, I mean all of it. It's robbing us of who we could become and how we could live our lives. Even hitting the snooze button in the morning is a little indulgence. First thing of consciousness, you reach over and you hit the snooze button. You're indulging in something and you're breaking a commitment to yourself.

Rachel Denning (30:06.19)
How many indulgences with time, right? Instead of being efficient, effective, instead of working when we're working, instead of being present when we're there with our kids, instead of being fully engaged, we're kind of halfway there. I mean, we're there, but we're not there, right? And so we feel so disconnected from friends or family because we're with them, but we're not really with them. We're kind of just in the same room, indulging on.

allowing our thoughts to be distracted, to be elsewhere, to not focusing, to not really connecting. We even have idle conversations or superficial chit chat conversations with people instead of really having meaningful conversations.

Whoa, how many indulgences do we have with time? How many do we have with technology? Instead of using technology as the unbelievable tool that it is that could just propel us forward, right? We have that power, like I said earlier, to really accelerate or retard ourselves. And when we indulge with technology, we're using it to retard our progress instead of to accelerate it. You see how powerful this is? Whoa, this stuff's amazing.

All right, when I started this podcast, I meant to only go like 10 minutes, but here it is because it's so powerful. And so again, I just want to circle back to this challenge for you and for me. Let's step up. Let's level up here. Let's let's have the absolute best year of our lives. And let's beware of pirates and hijackers who are literally literally robbing us. And we again, we are our own problems.

We are the pirates and hijackers because we're in control. We're the captain of our fate, the captain of our soul and the master of our fates, right? And so we're allowing these things to come in and rob our focus and our freedom and our path to mastery. When you're on the path to mastery and you're going and you start doing these little indulgences, you're getting hijacked. The pirates are coming in, taking you off the path to mastery and greatness. It's robbing your potential.

Rachel Denning (32:11.022)
If it takes thousands and thousands of hours to retain mastery, to reach it and achieve it and maintain it, then we're allowing these little things to rob us of that. And we get nowhere near being the master. We're just kind of a, just a generality. It's not, you know, that's the ultimate mediocrity, isn't it?

And this is what's terrifying is we get to the end of our lives and realize that our life had been hijacked, that pirates had come in and we'd let them come in, or that we were pirates to ourselves and living in self -sabotage and we didn't become masters. So take back control of your life. Take back control and come with me and experience the freedom and the energy and the joy.

of being fully engaged and in charge of life. And when we live like that, life is absolutely extraordinary. I love this stuff. Remember, my friends, every day we are training for greatness. Training for greatness. So let's beware of pirates and hijackers, take back control to be the captain of our ships, and let's go sail to our destiny and our potential.

and live an extraordinary life. Reach out for it.

Rachel Denning (33:47.246)
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.