#84 How Do You REALLY Measure If You Are Truly Successful?

Rachel Denning (00:01.23)
Hey, my friends, welcome to another episode of the extraordinary family life podcast. Man, I am excited and energized and alive today. Just feeling it. And so excited. Do you guys ever get like this when you start thinking about your adventures and upcoming awesomeness and this year? I hope I hope you're feeling fired up. I hope you're just super excited. We're, we're several days into a new year and a new decade. I hope you're feeling it. And I hope you're

Feeding it feed that motivation fuel it so that you can feel it And if you if you're not feeling stoked for this year, you don't have enough stuff on your calendar Stuff that's challenging and exciting and invigorating and thrilling and intimidating I'm and I'm being dead serious. Like if you're not fired up then you got to add some stuff to your calendar because because we ought to be feeling fantastic we we're also doing a

I told you guys about this, we're doing a 28 day challenge for January with a theme of you. It's one of the elements of the extraordinary family life formula is you. So we're starting with you. Next month will be marriage, which is perfect with Valentine's and perfect with our Valentine's couples trip to Thailand. man, I'm stoked about that. That's one of the things I'm thrilled about. We are gonna do some of the coolest things, see some of the most.

beautiful creations on earth and ride scooters around with our honeys through the amazing tropical land. man, you guys need to come with us. And then we've been planning out talking to the kids about China, because we're gonna do a martial arts trip over there in June and stay in a martial arts academy. We have to choose which martial arts of the six we're gonna study. And we've been talking about that and we're all gonna go to Guatemala.

do some humanitarian, I'm leading a humanitarian trip in May, so the whole family's going down there for that. I got a US history trip coming up in April, then we're gonna go to Mongolia, I got people signing up for that one, well for all the trips, and then I have been training super hard because of the hike we're gonna do Kilimanjaro in October. And some of you need to come climb that mountain with us. But I also realized, I think I told you guys about this.

Rachel Denning (02:20.846)
I learned about two mountains in Ecuador that I've been training hard for because I want to go climb them in the next several weeks. And got to get these legs and these lungs ready. So I'm feeling alive and excited and energized. So I've had this podcast, this is what we're going to talk about today. It's been on my mind for a long time. And I've just kind of been just milling it over and thinking about it. I've been thinking about it for years. And I want to present it.

in the most effective way to you guys. And I hope that what I can say, the way I say it, can convey it with enough feeling that it really hits home with you like it has with me. Because it's a big deal. And this is a, this is big, big thinking stuff. So like big existential life question kind of stuff. This isn't like, yeah, you know, practice this little thing tomorrow and you're good. Like this, these are the big questions and there's no easy answer to this.

But it's so important that we think about it and we consider it and we actually dedicate time to working through it. So congrats to you for listening to this because you're dedicating time to think about and work through it. But we got to give it more time and make sure we're on the right path and we'll get into that in a minute. But but first I want to make sure you're celebrating.

You're celebrating where you've come from, who you are to this day, even if you aren't quite where you thought you should be or would be, even if you had a rough year or you've made some mistakes or things have kind of unraveled in your life, which happens. I want you to still celebrate where you've come from, lessons learned, either through success or failure. And I want you to be excited about who you are and what you've done and where you're going.

So have some grace and patience with yourself. It's okay, it's good. Wherever you're at, like, all right, we got this. If you're down on the ground in the mud right now and things are hurting pretty bad, just commit to get back up. And I want you to face forward. Just keep your head forward. You cannot go through life with your eyes in the rear of your mirror. You can't do that. Because you lose momentum and speed and accuracy.

Rachel Denning (04:43.886)
So keep your eyes forward and I wanna encourage you and convince you that you can go a lot farther in the next few years than you think you might be able to. But you have to be on it. You gotta be game on all in. All right, you ready? You ready to dive in to the deep stuff? So here it is. This is the big question that's been on my mind for years, actually decades.

It's probably on your mind too. It's a pretty common thing we think about in life, especially if we're trying to be thoughtful. And it's this. How do you know where you are and how you're really doing? How do you measure yourself? How do you measure success? Now, stick with me here because it's really easy to give a kind of a knee jerk reaction answer.

and shallow and just well this is why and this is why it's easy to do that please don't do that the big thinkers the top performers the the real philosophers they're not so quick to do that they give it thought they let it can they let it kind of what's the word percolate maybe they let it just kind of soak they let it soak in how do you measure progress how do you measure status how do you measure growth

How do you measure improvement? How do you measure your true standing? That like that one, that word right there hits for me. How do you measure your true standing? You're standing with God, you're standing with men, you're standing in work, you're standing in life. Like, how do you measure that? Is it, it's never gonna, we'll come back to this, but it's never gonna be accurate by looking around and comparing ourselves to others. That will not be accurate.

How then does one measure their standing? How do you measure true high performance? How does one measure wisdom? How do you know if you're wise and if you're improving in wisdom? How do you measure greatness? How do you measure true success?

Rachel Denning (06:56.75)
And here's the danger.

We think we see clearly, but we often have blind spots. We often have erroneous perceptions about myself. Right. Sometimes you look in the mirror in the gym while you're working out and you think you're just bulging with muscles or or you think you're you're worse than you are. See, that's the other thing. We often are our perceptions of ourself are like those distorted mirrors.

We think we're better than we are, or we think we're worse than we are. But how does one get really accurate? Right? You might be playing a little b -ball with the neighborhood kids and feel like you are the man. But are you? Where's the reality check? Can I, can I, am I going around, and I've told you guys about this, if you listen to other podcast episodes in our family, like we're going around with lemon on your face. Right? We talk about having lemon on the face.

There's a story about this guy who went and robbed a bank and then promptly they went over to his house and arrested him. He's like, wait, how'd you know it was me? He's like, well, we caught you on camera. He's like, but how did the camera see my face? I had put lemon all over my face. And he believed like, because there's that invisible ink thing that you do with lemon, if the lemons on there, he believed that if you rubbed lemon on his face, the camera would not be able to see and detect his face. And...

And a lot of us are like that. We have lemon on our faces. It's just like we were a little off on our conclusions and our perceptions. Now, none of us is none of this is to like ridicule or mock or tear down, make us feel bad. Like it's a real honest philosophical question. This is a big question. And please don't brush this off. Please don't walk away from this like, it doesn't matter. whatever. Just.

Rachel Denning (08:53.806)
And there's a lot of people out there like, no, it doesn't matter. Just be yourself. Just do whatever you feel like doing. Just stop worrying about measuring and just live. And I get that. I get to just living. But how do you measure life? How do you measure if you're really living? And really simplistically, people say, because you feel good. Are you happy here? Do you like what you're doing? But I want to go deeper than that. I want to go bigger than that. And I think you do too.

People are really truly striving for greatness, high performers, top achievers, like people who want to be extraordinary. They're not going to settle with some cute little trite answer of like, you feel good about what you're doing. And all as long as you can pat yourself on the back and I either long as you didn't do anything really bad, then you're really good. And there's more than that. There's more depth. And in the gray thinkers and the great leaders and the great philosophers of all time have been wrestling with this question.

And please, please, please, I'm begging you, do not take this too lightly.

I guess don't take it too seriously either. Because then you could be fretting all the time. But give it enough weight. But like at least stick with me here and think through it's considerate.

Rachel Denning (10:15.918)
How do we perceive ourselves? How do we see ourselves? Sometimes it's too highly, sometimes it's too poorly. How do you measure your life? How do you know if you're succeeding? There's a real danger of measuring your life by the wrong standards.

And there's several metaphors to that of you put all this effort and strain and work to climb the ladder, right? To climb the ladders of life or work or whatever. Like you just put in all this effort to achieve things. And unfortunately, it isn't until you get near the top that you realize the ladder you've been climbing was against the wrong wall. So how do you know if it's the right wall?

You with me? Sometimes people say you've been barking up the wrong tree. How do you know if we're chasing down and barking the right tree? Many people are striving to succeed, but they're doing it with mistaken standards. So we're pursuing and chasing down these standards, you know, striving to achieve and succeed, only to find out later that the standard was mistaken.

Some falsely assume that we're taking things seriously when in fact we've actually been treating them very casually, but we didn't know. You with me? Because we had erroneous conclusions and comparisons and paradigms and perspectives. It's interesting, we can do this in our lives. And I meet people like this all the time. They're like, yeah, I'm so into that, I'm doing this and this and this.

And I'm like, and the contrast is like, well actually, like, if you really study that and you really get into it, what you're doing is, you're scratching the surface. What you think you're taking super seriously, you're actually really casual, almost dangerously casual about it. Right? And we can go to one extreme or the other. And in life, there's extremists on both ends, right? How do we know?

Rachel Denning (12:36.782)
How do we know if we're actually taking it seriously? Or how do we know if we're casual? How do we know if we're putting in a great effort just because it feels like a great effort to us? It might be like Mickey Mouse problems, right? Or Mickey Mouse effort. We might think we're putting in a million dollar effort when it's really just a minimum wage effort. How do we know? How do we know if my effort is a minimum wage effort or a millionaire effort? I can't measure it by what it's costing me.

because I might be super underdeveloped.

Some, you with me guys? I'm gonna be frank and bold and just really open and honest with you here and with myself. I don't have the answers. I have some of these answers because I've been pondering this and studying voraciously for years and working with people all over the world. So I have some thoughts I want you to consider. But I definitely don't feel like I have all the answers. But work with me here. There's times when we feel like...

We're super like dialed in, we got it. But we don't.

when we're actually quite off in what we thought we understood.

Rachel Denning (13:53.486)
Whoa, right? Man, does that sink in? This is powerful stuff. So.

Rachel Denning (14:03.534)
Sometimes we feel like we're destined to fail.

or we feel like we're destined to succeed.

and could be wrong and erroneous conclusions on both ends. What's interesting is a lot of people set themselves up for failure and the worst part is that they don't even know why they're gonna fail, why they can't succeed.

And very often the reality check is because like if I can't succeed it's not because I can't it's because I won't or I may not know and I may not know that.

Like how often are we going along like totally buying into an idea or a belief that maybe was passed along to us, or we just kind of picked up along the way, and we just totally bought into a belief about ourselves. And it isn't until later in life we have a reality check and realize, man, I was totally wrong about that. Like this whole time.

Rachel Denning (15:17.486)
all these years I believe this and I was totally wrong. Maybe it's a belief about food. Maybe it's a belief about achievement. Maybe it's a belief about money or finances or relationships. You get what I'm saying? Like how do you actually truly measure it? Not by other people's opinions. Not by our own perceptions because we're in we're operating through our lens and our own little bubble. How do you really measure it?

Man, and this, I gotta pause here, this is why coaching is so important. Having a great coach, like, catches us with lemon on our face, so to speak, or it just penetrates into our perceptions and our ideas and our beliefs. And like, I'm doing this every week with my clients, I love it. And they're constantly sending me emails or texts or telling me like, this is changing my life. Like, I...

I had no idea how transformational this would be and literally like how much I can achieve and how much I can do that I wouldn't do on my own without the coaching. Because this coaching is so critical. So make sure you have a coach. Like get into coaching. Do what you can, do it when you can, but like get a high performance coach in your life. Like if you're ready for this, go to gregdenning .com.

Sign up for a coaching session and let's let's dive in. Man, this is powerful. So I see people doing this kind of thing all the time. The whole and when I say that kind of thing, it's like it's all of the stuff like the perceptions I've done. I'm guilty of it, right? It's the misconceptions, the erroneous conclusions, the mistaken standards, having your ladder against the wrong wall, barking up the wrong trees, all of this stuff combined. And I see people doing it all the time to their own ultimate self.

retardation and even self -destruction.

Rachel Denning (17:23.502)
And what's interesting and tragic, if it goes all the way to the end of the lives, is like Leo Tolstoy's book of Ivan Illich. When he gets to the end of his life and screams out in agony as he's dying, what if my whole life has been wrong?

Rachel Denning (17:43.822)
We can't, we cannot afford to wait until the end of our lives to ask that question. We have to ask it now and we have to make sure we can find the right answers because you're going to hear all kinds of different answers. It's like, I heard this week, I was heard an old story. Actually, there's a book called Babbitt. I haven't read the book, but the last line of the book is.

It says, I've never done anything in my life that I wanted to do. And that's the ending of the story of this poor character that went through an entire mortal experience and never did anything that he really wanted to do.

What was he doing then? Most often it's because we're following social conditioning. We've been trained or conditioned or told what to think or do. We're following social scripts. Some of them are fantastic. Some of our social scripts are amazing and should be in place and we should follow them. But we should follow them deliberately, consciously, with choice. And some of them are retarded, lame and ought to be removed.

So the cause of this ultimate self damnation, like we're damning ourselves and that we're retarding and stopping, preventing our own progress and growth, it's generally caused by short -sighted decision -making. Making judgment calls only in the context of this decade or this generation.

Basically this current social condition the current fad the current trend by the group you are currently with You know the chief I've shared this before the chief cause of failure and unhappiness is giving up what we want most for what we want in the moment I think that was Charles Swindle who says that But we do that in life too where we get around a certain social group you might be in a certain high school group or a certain you know

Rachel Denning (19:58.318)
in a dance group or a choir or a sports team or a book club or at the golf course, the golf club or whatever, wherever you are. And it's interesting, we get kind of narrow minded in those groups and we get in these social circles and we start to measure everything in life by what that group thinks. Now here's what's crazy dangerous. If you only stay in that group and you don't get much outside influence or exposure,

you begin to just think like that and just naturally the human mind stops thinking of outside things. And so we begin, we fool ourselves into thinking we're very open minded and we're very considerate and open to other things, but just it's really true, out of sight, out of mind. And so because we're not exposed to these things regularly, we stop thinking about them. And it's really easy to convince ourselves that...

what our little group is doing or what our little country is doing or our little society, civilization, culture, whatever it is at the time, we begin to think that, yeah, this is the right way. This is the way. This is how life is. And it becomes really narrow and limited. Hence the non -negotiable need to consistently...

expose ourselves to new ideas and new things and new people and cultures and traditions and beliefs and have have difficult conversations with people who think differently than we do and and travel the countries and and expose ourselves to religion and cultures and traditions and ideas and places that are out of our our world otherwise we become so blinded.

And we end up making big decisions based on this little group or this little area. You know, it might be your current coworkers and your work environment. I work with people like this all the time and clients, right? Because they're working at a specific company and it has a company culture in a specific way that they're thinking in that way. And we all do this.

Rachel Denning (22:08.302)
We all do this. And so here again, this is the big existential question here is like, how do we really accurately measure all of this and life and truth and standing and all the things we talked about in the beginning? How do we measure that? Because you might be in a workplace right now and everybody's like, this is what we do. Go, go, go. This we do. And so when I meet you, meet with a coach or somebody or sit outside and say, yeah, this is how things are. wait a minute. What about this? And what about that? What about that? Like, wow. Wow. I hadn't even considered that. I haven't thought about it.

Because in our work we do it this way. It might be in your neighborhood. You know, in your neighborhood, most of the people, generally in neighborhoods, the houses are about the same, the cars are about the same, the clothes are about the same, the ideas, the ideology is about the same. There's a lot of research out there that says that the major determining factor on your status in life, your success in life is still your zip code. That's the most...

The most accurate determining factor of where you're going to end up in life is the zip code you grew up in because you're going to end up like that. Again, nobody's fault. You just grow up surrounded by that kind of thinking. And so you think like that. But it might be your church congregation. And if you switched congregations or neighborhoods or work or schools or countries, all of a sudden you're going, whoa, holy guacamole. And you just step out and into their world. And then then you get to see how they all think. And you might go into that going, whoa, check this out.

They all think the same way about this thing and it might be really good or it might be really narrow thinking. And you get exposed to that and you go, hey, wait a minute. There's something there because they're not exposed outside stuff. They all think this one way. And I just came from an area where we all thought the one the one way is it's exact opposite. It's different. You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to explain this as many ways possible. I want our minds today just to have an explosion of perspective.

and just kind of blow past our current limitations and boundaries and perceptions and paradigms. Really let your mind just kind of explode out of here. And for some of you, it might be really difficult if you haven't been in extreme opposite cultures or beliefs or ideas, or if you haven't experienced these changes in your own life, it might be hard to conceptualize this, but those of you who've experienced that, where you thought one thing and then you go and meet another group or another person that thinks totally differently.

Rachel Denning (24:34.862)
I remember having this huge aha when you know because I grew up in just total poverty I was out on my own. I had no money. I didn't think about money and I remember one time I got to go traveling internationally with a millionaire a very wealthy millionaire and and he was free he retired like at 37 and he wanted me to come kind of guide and translate so he's like I'll pay for everything man and just being around him the way he acted with other people and with money and with experiences.

blew my reality. I'd never been around. I'd never been exposed to it. All of my thinking, you know, the richest person I've ever been exposed to, looking back now, probably only made, you know, 100, 200 ,000 a year, was the wealthiest person I've ever been exposed to. I remember thinking, whoa, so much money. But when you start now meeting, and I have friends that have tens of millions of dollars just sitting in their banks or real estate portfolio or whatever, they think and act and talk differently. And when you get exposed to that, you're like,

Whoa! I didn't know people thought about that. I never considered it. I'd only been around a certain mindset. And that's true with every part of life. Even the way we do life. Lifestyle. Life choices. You see how this is a big deal? And it literally affects every single part of our lives. Mental, emotional, physical, social, spiritual, financial. So what is the best standard by which I should be measuring myself?

I do want to state emphatically that there is a wrong way to do things. There's a bunch of people out there who are promoting the idea that there's no wrong way to live life. But history tells us otherwise. And it's interesting the more I study history and devour.

brilliant, brilliant historical minds and lives and ideas and cultures, the more I begin to understand that big picture. Because there's two ways to go. There's one to go in our day and time with all the different kinds of people, brilliant people and ideas and cultures. So we can go worldwide now, and then we can go worldwide throughout recorded history. Whoa. Now it starts to get big and broad and deep. But history tells us otherwise. There are...

Rachel Denning (26:56.942)
wrong ways to live. And people who promote this idea that there's no wrong way, that everything's relative, they lack an understanding of history.

All you gotta do is just study history. There's a great series called the, I've got it here on my shelf, called The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. And they spent their lives just documenting history, studying history. And the outlines, the principles they share in there just make it clear that like, there's, there are historical patterns and there are historical lifestyles and cultures and ideas and ideologies and philosophies, and some of them just are wrong.

total social and personal destruction and family destruction. So yes, I want to say emphatically there are wrong ways to do things.

Rachel Denning (27:52.334)
But, well, let me say this. There are also other people who are absolute geniuses, but who are also missing pieces of the major life puzzle. And so sometimes it's hard and it can get confusing because you might meet somebody that they literally are just a genius.

and they say things and we're persuaded to believe them because they're so brilliant.

But how do we know if they have all the pieces, the major life puzzle pieces? Are you with me? Does that make any sense? I'm trying to fit that together. Like you might be absolutely brilliant, stunningly brilliant and successful in one area, but just dropping the ball completely in another area. And so it's dangerous to follow that person emphatically because they're missing this holistic piece. So just because someone is stunningly brilliant doesn't make them right.

So again, this is a big question, you guys. You see why this is a challenging topic and why it's a big deal? So if there is a wrong way, then there is a right way. But I think more accurately, we should say there are right.

ways making it plural. I don't think there's just one way to do life. I think there are many right ways, but I do think we have to set a standard that there are for sure wrong ways and we can find that by studying history. So there's a right way to do things. There's a common denominator of success. There is a recipe. There is a formula that sets apart high performers from the rest of the herd.

Rachel Denning (29:45.07)
And there's clearly a better way of doing things. Like, I think we can all agree on that. That if we look around, there's formulas, recipes, standards, common denominators that just really set truly holistic, happy, successful people apart from the rest of the herd. And so then we gotta find that thing. So what is that way? And how do I know if I'm doing it well?

Now, like I mentioned earlier, we can't safely determine that by looking around at others. Because some are above us, some are below us, some are totally off course. Most are scattered all over the place. And so we're looking around everywhere and we're like, well, who do I look at? Like, wow, they're all over the place. And the people that are surrounding us might have a couple of pieces just nailed, but other ones totally destroyed. And...

You know, how do we put this together? And even if they seem to be succeeding, again, how do we measure success? Even if they seem to be succeeding, like how do we know if that's ultimately what success really is? Because you might see people around us that are succeeding, let's take, for example, let's take financial, they seem to be succeeding financially. Like they're just counting, like I'm gonna do that. And so,

We start pursuing one of those things, one of those areas, and it's the iconic case, like we mentioned in the very beginning, you climb that ladder only to find that it's against the wrong wall. And you wish you could do life over again. Another big problem is that mediocrity is the standard, and ironically, it keeps drooping to lower levels. The level of mediocrity keeps dropping and dropping and dropping. It's just, it's getting ridiculous.

So we can't look around at those standards because they're so low. It's like admiring mushrooms, right? Some of them reach their full glory overnight.

Rachel Denning (31:54.702)
where the mighty oak or a giant sequoia may take many decades or centuries to reach their full glory.

But in the process, it doesn't look so great, slow growth, right? It's like watching the water while you're paddling upstream. If you look down, it seems like you're really moving and making progress. And so if that's your only measurement, you're looking at the water like, hoo, look at me, go, I am moving. And you can go your whole life looking at the water until you look up over at the bank and there's a big tree there and you realize you haven't moved. You've been paddling and paddling and paddling and you haven't moved at all.

just the water moving past you. Other people like to compare down. They look down at other people who are struggling, having a really hard time, and so then they pat themselves on the back and say, wow, at least I'm not like that. I'm doing fantastic. But there's no value in that. So this is seriously one of the greatest dangers that I see all the time. And people are just coming to the wrong conclusions. I've done it.

you've done it. Many people do it all the time. We just come to the wrong conclusions. And it's because, again, for most people it's not their fault. They just live out what they know. It's what they see. It's what they hear day in and day out. It's what they're told is cool. It's what they see is success. That it may be totally distorted and rested. W -R -E -S -T, rested, where it means just twisted and...

out of context. So we're often coming to completely erroneous conclusions about success and measuring ourselves and what life. You see where I'm at you guys? Are you still with me? I hope you're still with me here. Like this is profound and this is maybe out of this kind of a different kind of podcast episode here but I really want to invite you to think like this and think differently and kind of go big with me and big big picture thinking about life. So where's the accurate measurement?

Rachel Denning (34:03.47)
And obviously there's not an easy answer to this.

But here's where I think the answer is.

It's in knowing very well the teachings of the greatest teachers and leaders of all time. It's knowing well the story of humanity and the story of civilization told accurately, told without a diluted agenda.

I'm seeing that too. I'm seeing people writing books and they're kind of skewing things to some kind of agenda they have. But it's to know for ourselves to study right from the teacher himself or herself to study the history. It's having a broad wholesome view of mankind and of life. It's like zooming way way way out and looking back at the history of mankind and the whole globe.

And really considering on a deep level, like what is it that truly works over a whole lifetime? And what is it that doesn't? What are people who've lived out their lives? Brilliant, wonderful people, teachers, leaders, philosophers, thinkers. They've lived out their whole life. What are the conclusions they came to? After decades on the earth, what conclusions did they come to? We would be wise to listen to them. So if you're making your decisions based only on what

Rachel Denning (35:39.726)
you have seen and experienced in your life and your little corner of the earth, I promise you're missing some key ingredients and perspectives. But how can you even know that, right? We don't know what we don't know. We just, we don't. We're like, we don't know what we don't know. Unless, and here's the big one, this is really what I really want to drive home to everybody today. Unless we are...

constantly exposing ourselves to new ideologies, cultures, traditions, people, perspective, and especially the wisdom of the ages.

My friends, none of us can afford to go through life without constantly studying from the best books. We can't afford to do it.

Because life is too valuable, too precious, too serious to be making decisions and choices again and again and again that are often erroneous and narrow and short -sighted and shallow. We just can't afford to do that. We have to be reading from the greatest teachers and leaders and thinkers of all time, every day.

And so I've built this into a habit of mine. And here, let me give you a little hack here. If you can find people who have spent decades of their life studying all of those books, and you listen to them, and they've got their life dialed in holistically, their mental and emotional health is great, their physical health is great, their spiritual health is great, their financial health is great, they're leading other people, so it's not just, they're not locked in their own little bubble.

Rachel Denning (37:41.518)
about teaching and they've exposed themselves to all that. It gives you a huge advantage because you can read their stuff and listen to their stuff and it gives you a gigantic advantage because you get to get bits and pieces of all the history and all the stuff that they've consumed, right? And they're now sharing. So there's a good hack there. So we've got to do this and I've built this into my life. Every morning I read from great books. Every evening I read from great books. I literally bookend my day with reading from

great classic books. And I've shared and am willing to share my book list. I have a recommended book list. It's big. And you just shoot me a message. Go to gregdenning .com or find me on Instagram or Facebook. Shoot me a message. I'm happy to share it. I share it with you. And it's all the best books that I've read. And I've averaged about a book a week for the last couple of decades.

and I've got, you know, I'm operating from some of the best books of all time and not books that I said are the best books of all time, although I'm making my own list, but the most brilliant people, people like Harold Bloom and people like Mortimer Adler who were so brilliant. They're the ones that compiled, like they compiled the Harvard classics and the great books, great books of the Western world and other compilations, right? Where they...

They threw out and they got it passed down to them like, yeah, these are the best books. These are books that have been, they've been, been read for centuries and they're still around providing wisdom. Those are the books we ought to be reading from and just fit it into your, your morning and evening routines. And even, you know, pockets throughout the day, I'll stop and I'll read from these great books. So I'm constantly getting wisdom and here's how it works, right? I read from those books and then I'm measuring.

my thinking, my emotions, my life, my decisions, my choices, my philosophy, my perspective, my paradigm, my standing, my success. I measure that against these brilliant thinkers and these great leaders. And that helps align me and it injects wisdom into my thinking and my conclusion.

Rachel Denning (40:01.646)
The biggest problem I see today is that most people are making their conclusions based off what they're consuming in the media. TV is their teacher.

They are forming their life philosophy on what they're consuming from the TV or from social media. I'm dead serious. If you don't believe me, strike up a conversation with somebody about a big life topic and watch how often they share an opinion based on what they saw on TV or on social media. It's unreal. Very few people are reading from the great books or thinking outside of what...

they're exposed to in their little world. And so they're literally basing their life decisions and ultimately the outcome of quality of life on what they're consuming in the media. It's crazy. So my friends, I want to challenge you with me to seek out research, identify role models who are truly living holistic, extraordinary lives that are

alive today and those who have died we can read about their lives and study their lives.

Not the show, not the pretense, not the bling bling that's out there, there's so much of that now, but a real, genuine, all around amazing life. And do your homework, please. I personally know a lot of people who are public figures and they portray an image of having it all together, and they don't.

Rachel Denning (41:49.038)
and you meet him in person. This happens often. I get to meet I get to meet public figures often. And their lives are often a mess. A real genuine mess and occasionally I get hired to help coach and mentor their families. Again, I'm not I'm not trying to throw anybody in the bus. I'm not trying to be mean or cruel. I'm just saying be careful like make sure people actually have it together.

We're gonna listen to them. And that's a matter of integrity too. If people are gonna be out there leading and sharing things, they ought to have their stuff together, holistically. Get your crap together. Get your whole life together. And then there's people, like people are becoming coaches. I'm gonna, this is my little rant here. Again, it's ridiculous. People are promoting like coaching as a career. Like, it's just a good career choice. You know, it's like accounting. All you gotta do is take a class and you can do this.

Like, no, man, no! I did not pursue this as a career choice. Like, I studied this voraciously for decades, worked with thousands of people all over the world, and then I realized, okay, this is what works, this is what doesn't. Like, I have to share this. I have like a moral obligation to share what works. But there's people whose lives are in shambles while they're trying to coach others.

So just a warning right there.

Make sure they have great health, live with integrity, they have awesome marriages, family, relationships, leadership, business, impact, spiritual greatness. And read from the greats, the true greats, the Shakespeare, Dickens, Austin, as in Jane Austen. Read from the old classics, George Bernard Shaw. Read from the great poets and thinkers.

Rachel Denning (43:48.366)
You know, the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the, the, Theodore Roosevelt. I love Roosevelt, the Montaigne, Marcus Aurelius, right? And Epictetus. Whoa. Love those Aristotle. I'm looking across my, my library here, some of the best, the, the great philosophers and thinkers of all time, Dante. and I'm, I'm reading right now. I'm reading from Francis Bacon and I'm reading from.

The Confessions of St. Augustine and Thomas Paine and Don Quixote. I'm almost done with Don Quixote right now. And Defoe's books, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo was absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Read from him, from Confucius, and on and on. There's so many great thinkers and leaders. Devour that stuff.

get in on it, even if it's just a little bit every day, right? I keep listening to this podcast, and I'm gonna share all the stuff that I'm learning from them. So I'm learning from the greatest thinkers and leaders and teachers. And I'm really trying so hard, you guys, I hope you know this from all sincerity in my heart. I'm trying to learn from all of the life experiences we had like traveling around the world for over a decade, and interacting with so many thousands of different people and different ideas and ideology and life experience and my own journey from

living on my own as a teenager to try and testing all these things through life and experiencing them and studying the greatest thinkers. And I'm trying so hard to make sure that I'm aligned with wisdom and intelligence and true success and meaning and happiness and fulfillment. And if we'll do that, you guys, it makes such a gigantic.

Difference, it's awesome. So will you join me in sharing this? Share this podcast, share this episode. And if you've liked any of the podcasts, go back to iTunes and give me a rating and leave a comment there and a recommendation and maybe take a screenshot of where you're listening to it and share it and tag me and tag the podcast and share this. Let's get it out there and let's get this in front of people and make the most of ourselves.

Rachel Denning (46:10.734)
Now, I gotta share one more thing that is just unreal and works like magic, and it's in figuring this out. A lot of it, if we go inside, if we get deep in our heart and souls and our minds, we can get so much wisdom and insight from spending the mental work and the spiritual work and the emotional work of getting it clear in our lives, but very few people.

ever do this. So my wife and I created what we call the Extraordinary Life Planner.

And in there, you zoom way out on yourself and you get a big picture of who you wanna be and how you wanna do life and what really matters to you. Like what really are your priorities? At the end of your life, what are you gonna be really grateful you did and what are you gonna really regret? Like get a big picture on each of your roles that you have in life and we have many roles. So you zoom way out to get this big lifetime perspective.

And then you start working your way back in to the decades, the five years to a year. And even a year is too big because we end up procrastinating and putting things off. And so we dial it in inside the planner to a 12 week goals and 12 week planning system. And you'd be blown away when you have big picture perspective and purpose and meaning and direction. And then you dial it into a 12 week period. You'll be blown away what you can accomplish. And then we dial that down to the monthly.

Like our 28 day challenges in our extraordinary family life group coaching, we do the 28 day challenges. And then you dial it down to the week and to the day. And so the Extraordinary Life Planner literally helps you plan out a full and complete, holistic, extraordinary life. Get that planner. Start with that. Do the thinking. Everyone who's using it is like, come back like, I can't believe this thing is blowing my mind just working through the exercises. Give me so many insights and -hahs, things I'd never considered before.

Rachel Denning (48:17.678)
because it's forcing me to think big picture and then right now in this moment and this this full zoom it's huge. So you can find that you can go to gregdining .com and hit courses or go to extraordinaryfamilylife .com and hit courses and it's in there the extraordinary life planner. You guys just let's do this let's live fantastic lives let's make sure that we're not making our choices and decisions.

and life philosophy based on really narrow, simple things, something we learned from TV show or social media or the neighbor or whatever, but that we have a big, broad, wholesome view of life and of mankind and of history. And then we're seeing things clearly and doing things that really truly will bring us happiness and joy and fulfillment and meaning. We get to the end of life and look back and be like, yes, yes, I truly lived. And then I can go to bed tonight.

and sleep well because today I lived well.

this matters so much. Remember, every day we're training for greatness. We're living for greatness. And it is an art that is won through training and habituation. So let's train for greatness. Let's live for greatness. Awesome is always an option, my friends. Reach upward.

Rachel Denning (49:44.91)
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.