#87 The First Thing That MUST Happen Before Any Success— Awareness

Rachel Denning (00:01.358)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the extraordinary family life podcast with Greg Denning. man, it's another fantastic day to be alive, but I am exhausted. My daughter, Kaya and I have been going crazy hard in our martial arts training and conditioning class. And man, we are getting crazy results. I'm so much stronger. My stamina is up. My.

Cardiovascular fitness is up strength is up. Everything's up and we've just been pushing hard. We've been really consistent It's it's just amazing every time you you go hard at something and you start getting the results I don't know if you're like me. I'm just like I Step back and I'm like, it's a miracle. This is amazing It's just true you guys when you go hard and you're consistent You just get results

It is awesome. This is every, every area of life. And we forget that. And we, we kind of plod along and either we're not going hard at it or we're not consistent enough at it. And then we're like, it's not working. What's going on? It just works. Man, it just works. It's awesome. So I leveled up now we've been going a few weeks and I was, I was doing the 60 minutes of HIIT training, high intensity interval training.

and I decided to add a 20 pound vest to my workout. So now I'm doing 60 minute HIIT trainings that were already hard with a 20 pound vest on. And man, it is upping the level of my game. And it's awesome, it feels fantastic. And I told you guys, I'm gonna get in the best health of my life. And every part of my life is gonna get in the best it's ever been this year. This is my year. And I'm going for it. And...

man, it's paying off, it's so awesome. So, are you still going after your goals? Are you still committed? Are you still all in? Are you still paying the price? You've probably had some failure days, you probably had some days where it didn't work out so well, you didn't hit your numbers or whatever. Get back in the game, stay with it. That's gonna be make it or break it this year is if you can stay with it. That's gonna be it, like you got.

Rachel Denning (02:28.462)
to stay in the game all in and make it happen. All right, so let's dive in today. What we're talking about is so exciting. And I think about this all the time. I'm constantly thinking about you, thinking about the people I meet, the people I've met all around the world. And how can I, how can I help facilitate total transformations in people's lives? That's, that's what I live for.

because it changed my life so much and brought so much happiness and joy and success into my life. I want to share it with everyone I can. And so I think about all the time because it's not automatic nor episodic. It doesn't happen in just one shot and just, you know, if you say something to someone, it doesn't mean they're going to change. Like there's, there's this formula. There's a formula for success. Part of which of course is the extraordinary family life formula. If you guys don't have that yet.

Go to gregdenning .com. It's free. It's put in your name and email. You get three video training. it's awesome on the extraordinary family formula, but success in itself has a formula. There's a recipe. It just works. And as I've studied the lives of great men and women and worked with people literally all over the world, like it just works. And so I think about this all the time and I think about it in myself. And so as I've thought about it, and I want you to think about it too.

Like when you've really succeeded at something, when you really achieved something special, what was the very first step? What was the very first thing that like the essential ingredient, the foundation, what is it at the most elementary level that has to happen in order for change or progress or achievement in order to be a high performer?

in order to be truly successful, what has to happen? And as I thought about it for me and for many people, I realized it's coming into this consciousness, this awareness that it even exists, right? And like there's, there's so many examples of this in my life of things that I, I literally was not aware of. Man, I can think of so many examples and you probably can too. We could.

Rachel Denning (04:49.71)
If we were together, we'd make this amazing list. We could write it all out on a whiteboard or something and just get this phenomenal list of these times or experiences where we just had these aha moments of like, what? I didn't even know that was possible. And that, think about it, it's across every aspect of life from finances, right?

to meeting millionaires and billionaires and the way they think and the way they operate and what they do with their money from purchases to savings to taxes, to earning, to success strategies in business. You come across things and you're like, are you kidding me? I didn't even know that existed. Right? And we're going to talk about this a lot today, but I'm going to go ahead and state it right now.

It's what we don't know. It's what we're not aware of. What we don't know. Like we don't even know it exists. We can't use it because we don't know it exists. And so like even a business strategy or a tax strategy or a saving or investing strategy, if we don't know that it exists, we can't use it. How could we? Right. And that's, that's going to be the driving principle we talk about today. But it's true in health. When you devour,

you know, the great thinking and strategies of the most brilliant minds and researchers. And I'm not talking about your everyday run of the mill stuff. Like, I'm talking about studying the best of the best. And then you have these huge aha moments. And you guys know I'm constantly studying, just devouring books. I finished two books this week. One about...

extending your life. And this book, it's called Superhuman by Dave Asprey. And I don't agree with everything in there because I'm a purist, but his research is phenomenal. And my goodness, some of the things he's discovered about what's happening to human body and big macro level stuff and micro level stuff, what we're doing to ourselves and just we're causing our aging and our pain and our suffering.

Rachel Denning (07:14.382)
and we're living in self -sabotage with what we're putting in our bodies. my goodness, it was unbelievable. So you read that and again, there's another example. The first step always is coming to an awareness. It's finding out what exists, what's possible. I learned things in that book this week. Like, my goodness, yes. And Rachel and I, we're transforming our home and what we're eating and what we're doing in little tweaks, even leveling up even more what we're doing.

because we came into an awareness of what's happening on a on a mitochondrial level and an awareness of what what's taking place. The big the big picture of what that does to our bodies and aging because I plan on living well over 100. Right. And and when you come into an awareness and there's another example an awareness that's that's even possible. Right. Most people are like that. I just die. We're so blinded by our

current surroundings. And another thing I've been studying is this book about just great men and women throughout history who are mostly unknown to most of us. And they literally did things that changed the world. And I've been studying their lives. And again, the awareness, the way they lived life and how they did things and their commitment to greatness and excellence and their sacrifice for the good of humanity.

And again, awareness that that even exists and that it didn't before. I mean, and this goes for everything, even down to when we went into Florence, which is one of my favorite cities in the world and you all ought to go there. It's not even called Florence. We drive up and I'm sitting there, we're driving along, I'm watching for signs, waiting for signs to Florence, and I just keep seeing signs to Firenze. I'm like, what's this Firenze? And I realize it's not even called Florence.

It's called Firenze. And it's, I mean, little things, right? That's okay, no big deal. But then these have his awareness like, like that's not even what it's called. And the country of Hungary, it's not called Hungary. When we got to the border, there was a big sign, welcome to, I can't even, I don't even know what it's in, Magyarorskavik, or something, I don't know, something like that. I was like, what? It's not even called Hungary. This is awesome. And it's just an awareness. So the first essential step, my friends,

Rachel Denning (09:38.574)
to everything in life. If you want to be successful, you have to gain an awareness. And I was walking in so much blindness and I'm confident there's still so much I don't know. Because literally you could spend your entire life studying one thing. Just one thing. In fact, I read one of the many biographies I read was about this person who dedicated their life to studying fleas. Which for most of us is like, why in the world would you do that?

But it goes to show like you can literally and was still making discoveries after decades of researching them, still finding out fascinating things that we didn't know about the animal world and about astronomy and about like all the sciences and math and whatever. Like it's unreal, right? And if a person can spend their entire life studying one little insect, we can't know it all.

So we just have to be learning as much as we can all the time and exposing ourselves to greatness in every way, shape and form and opening doors for our kids as well. I mean, there's so much to learn. But if we want to progress, if we want to succeed, we have to gain awareness. And today we're going to talk about self -awareness, of really taking a closer look.

at ourselves being able to see.

How our thinking and our feeling and our behaviors is affecting everything. In fact, directing everything. Awareness is this first step, the critical foundation, the essential first ingredients. There is no beginning without awareness. How does one make changes without even being aware that a change is possible? And you, maybe you've felt this before or had this experience. I know I have.

Rachel Denning (11:39.182)
many times where I finally came into an awareness and realized, man, that was me. I was causing the problem or I learned about something and realized, man, I was only being held back because I didn't know this other option existed. And once I learned about it and made changes, then it happens, right? How does one begin to climb a path that he or she doesn't even know exists?

literally without self -awareness and today we're going to talk about a deep, keen, clear self -awareness. Without this kind of awareness, we don't have the full power to make changes in our lives. But here's what's amazing. When you meet and read about and interact with people who are true high performers, they are happy, they are successful, they are crushing it. They are very, very aware.

So how does this work? Let's dive in. So we begin by looking at ourselves, at our inner world. And again, for some of you, it's like, what? Like it seems so almost metaphysical and kind of weird, right? Like how do you look at yourself? And it's literally, this is a new thing for so many. They don't even have the awareness that they can observe themselves, the inner world. In order to do that, we have to.

remove our focus from the outer world for all the distractions and so much that's going on. Many of us are literally operating unconsciously and we have to take our focus and look inside and that comes through observation and presence and mindfulness and consciousness. Those are all the same words for all this and awareness, right? And I've shared this before we have

somewhere between 60 ,000 to 90 ,000 thoughts per day, the vast majority of which around 90 % of them are just repeat mode are the same thoughts from yesterday and the day before and the day before. And so like the unconscious mind is directing everything in our lives. If we do not consciously directed ourselves, let that sink in and hit home.

Rachel Denning (14:06.926)
the unconscious mind, it just forms these, these neural connections and these patterns. These, it comes to these conclusions. Literally it's all operating off our past. So the past experience has made all this, right? So the unconscious mind is created by the past and we're living in the past. We're operating on old software, so to speak, and it's directing everything in our lives unless we stop and get clear awareness.

and then start making proactive decisions. Isn't that fascinating? And you'll see it now. You'll notice it now in your life and in everyone you interact with. They're just on automatic default, unconscious mode. They're going along doing things and most of them don't know why. Most people just don't know why. And so that man, another little side note here, let's be super, gracious.

with others, let's give them grace and kindness and the benefit of the doubt. And when people make mistakes and do dumb things and repeat dumb things, let's say maybe let's give them benefit of doubt and say they probably don't know. They're probably operating unconsciously like I am in some things and you are in some things. Like that's the way the brain works. But today we're going to talk about retraining the brain. this is so exciting. I love this stuff.

Here's what happens though. We can end up with a mind that is very full, full of all kinds of junk and stuff and distractions. You know what I'm talking about? It's full of all the media stuff and worries and fears and anxieties. And he said this, she did that. What am I going to do? no, what am I going to eat for lunch?

And now I'm going to take care of these kids. I'm going to worry about that now. And then so I get a phone call and then I get an email and then I get a text message and now I get an alert and now there's a bop bop bop bop bop. Right. And our minds are so full that we're actually prevented from being mindful. There's this contrast there of a mind that is full versus being mindful. Another way to say that is that we become very reactive instead of proactive.

Rachel Denning (16:33.582)
It's a part of an awareness exercise right now. I want you to just observe yourself and think for a moment. Are you in what areas of your life are you reactive instead of proactive? Let that, let that sink in a bit. And with this whole awareness activity, I want you to spend some time today in this week, like really thinking about this, really writing this out, really getting, getting to know yourself. Like Shakespeare said, know thyself.

Right? We've got to come to know ourselves. Most of us don't because we lack awareness. I, I constantly, I'm, I meet with people all the time in it when I'm doing coaching, even in speaking, I'll ask and I'll ask questions and people are just blown away because they're just so unaware of what they've been doing. It was such a default mode, such an autopilot reactive mode. Like they,

They aren't even aware of what they're doing or why. And I'll stop them and I'll say, Hey, I just, I just noticed you're doing that. And they're like, Whoa. Yeah. I'm like, why do you do that? I don't know. Like I've been doing it for years. I don't even know. I'm like, would you realize it's affecting you? man. I hadn't even, I hadn't even thought about that.

Where where did this come from and we start to dig we start picking things up and it'll come from childhood memories It'll come from a negative experience and the vast majority of it just comes from poor mental management Again, like I'm not I'm not being judgmental mean here a lot with a lot of grace We're just saying we're unaware. We didn't know and so I want you to really dig into your life right now and start practicing awareness of like How much of what you do is reactive?

and how much is proactive. And here's another level. Sometimes you think reactive is the only option. Well, yeah, when something happens, you got to react to it. No, there are other options. I mean, that was my journey. And I've shared these stories before about having a crazy temper and getting so angry until I was made aware by a great discourse that anger is an option. It's a choice. You don't.

Rachel Denning (19:00.814)
You don't have to respond. You don't have to react. You don't have to feel anything.

It's a choice. And when I became aware of that, and I was conscious of that, and then now mindful of it, I could actually stop and choose and say, well, what I want to feel. Then that carried over into like, wait a minute, I get to choose my emotions? Well, why not choose to be happy? Right? And a lot of people are going through life. And it's not that they're choosing to be miserable. It's just that they're not choosing to be happy.

They're not choosing, and again, because of a lack of awareness.

Many, many, many, my goodness, I see this every single day. Many people struggle so much with parenting.

and the vast majority of the causes of their struggles are a total lack of awareness. They don't realize that there even exist tools and strategies and resources and techniques and skills for parenting. There's a parent, I mean, the massive parenting skill set. And if we're better at those skills, if we develop the knowledge and skills around why children do things and why we do things,

Rachel Denning (20:20.974)
And then we put a technique in place and a little bit of a structure there. The problem that we saw no way around that we asked the neighbors and friends about, we asked our family members about, and they're like, yeah, that's just the way teenagers are. that's the way toddlers are. yeah. It's miserable. And they all together lack awareness. And they go around, you know, we're asking that that's the irony of this. We can't go around asking other unaware people about.

these situations because they're unaware as well. And so we start, then it like, it gets, we get this, this bias confirmation, right? We're like, it just confirms in our heads, that's yeah, that's just the way things are. And there's nothing to do about it because we're talking to people who don't know that there's anything that you can do about.

And I literally I see it every single day and you do too. You see it at the grocery store. You see it at church. You see it in your, in your parenting groups. You see it at schools, your kids school, like all around. You see it. And like, here's a huge one. Parents aren't aware that they, the parents are creating massive entitlement problems in their children and youth, which is then leading to a giant.

gigantic failure to launch epidemic where youth and young adults are not growing up and being adults and They look around and and they see it happening and they talked to other people like yeah Wow, this is just a huge problem crazy Hopefully we survive this They told they know they're not aware that they are the cause and they can be the solution, right?

There's all this stuff. So I'm giving all these examples. I'm trying to hit it from different directions.

Rachel Denning (22:08.75)
But look at every area of your life. Where are you being reactive? Where can you be proactive? Where are you being reactive? Where can you be proactive? And get really clear.

about each aspect. What are you reacting to? What are you unaware of? Another way to look at this is like, what are the pain points in your life right now? What, what are you struggling with that you've been struggling with for a long time? In what areas are you not further along than you hoped you would be?

and just start looking at it like what's what's missing why am I not why am I not already at the next level of my life.

Rachel Denning (22:59.63)
and start looking there and like, where, where is this happening? Where am I lacking awareness? So let's keep going. Because, you know, people who are a real true high performers, they are keenly aware of their thoughts of their feelings of where the thoughts come from, how the thoughts create the feelings, what the feelings produce that lead to the actions and habits. And then they can see they have this awareness of the direct connection.

between thought and outcome.

True high performers are really keenly aware of that. They are conscious of their thoughts day in and day out instead of just letting them roll on default mode on autopilot. They're conscious of their thoughts and they know that their thoughts produce outcomes. Where unaware people, most people have no idea that there's any kind of relationship between their thoughts and their circumstances. They just don't know.

And they don't know that their own thing that one that they're in charge of their own thinking and that they can alter it. They don't know that. And two they don't realize it just seems crazy that the things I'm thinking are creating my circumstances. How in the world can that be possible. Right. They don't they don't even aware of the connection. And then there's another level of extreme ownership. People who are really truly successful take extreme ownership for.

every situation and circumstance and outcome in their lives. Woo! Man, this stuff is good. And they're 100 % aware of that. Everything. And even if it includes other people and their actions, we've got to have an awareness of the role we play in that. And that we can and must have greater influence. And there's another awareness.

Rachel Denning (24:55.918)
that influences is a skill set and it's based on knowledge and practice and that I can increase my influence. Right. I keep like, there's so many layers of awareness. Isn't this awesome? Isn't this exciting? So presence is power when we're 100 % present. And the cool thing is that we have to be aware that right now is all that we have. Right now is all that we have.

The future doesn't exist when we get to the future, so to speak, it's the present. So the future doesn't exist. The past is gone. But the unconscious mind lives mostly in the past through grief and regret and bitterness and grudges, right? Or reliving past successes or past failures. So there's a lot of embarrassment.

and insecurity, but that's, that's all living in the past. And so we have a negative experience back there and the mind just replays it and replays it and replays it. And it'll actually make conclusions. It'll make neuro connections and the unconscious mind will do this bloop. And then it just replays it again and again and again. And unless we have this awareness, okay, I hope this is sinking in. There's no way for me to gauge this. I wish I was with you and we could just walk through this. There's no way to gauge this. Is this hitting home?

Are you realizing that there are things that happened to you that you made a neural connection and maybe it was even when you were a child, somebody said something mean you were in your middle school or you had a bad experience or the parents kept repeating something again and again and again and it made a neural connection and bump that connection. Now is just getting replayed by the subconscious mind day in and day out without your awareness and you're struggling with.

and insecurity or self doubt or fear or worry. And you've made these conclusions about life, but it's all like the old software. It's the unconscious mind playing that broken record and stepping into it now and saying, Whoa, wait a minute. I have awareness now I'm realizing what's happening and why. And I can, I have the consciousness.

Rachel Denning (27:21.358)
to decide whether that's empowering me or disempowering me. I have the consciousness to choose whether I want to keep believing that or realize, no, that's bogus. Do you realize that we believe things that aren't true right now?

and we pick things up along the way and we've grabbed hold of those and they've become really limiting beliefs and we're not even aware of it or why. This is another cool thing I do with my clients when we're doing coaching. Like we'll go along and I'll say, you know, something will come up and it'll just come out. They'll say, no, I'm terrible at remembering names. I'm like, well, that's a fixed mindset right there. And then an identity you've taken on the...

the identity of being terrible at remembering names. You're like, well yeah, but I am. I'm like, well that's because you choose to be. You're not being conscious about it. If I gave you $10 ,000 to remember everyone's name in this room, would you do it? And you're like, dang straight, I would. Yeah, right? I mean, we can do it. And it comes with practices, practice and repetition and connection. And there's actually a skillset to dramatically increasing your memory.

But it's all these different things and it's, it's fears. Well, okay. Now I'm jumping ahead because the, the unconscious mind lives in the past or in the future, but rarely in the present. Well, how does it live in the future? The unconscious mind is filled with fear, worry, and anxiety, especially worry. So those of you who are worryers,

Yeah, I just came up with a thought of a cool contrast. Warrior versus warrior. Right? But worry is just a misuse of your imagination.

Rachel Denning (29:19.566)
Let that sink in. Worry is just a misuse of your imagination. Now should we think about the future? Absolutely we should. And we should take action in the present based on future results we want. But most of the time we unconsciously, it's the unconscious mind again, we're unconsciously worrying about random weird things, rare crazy things, and we let our imagination run wild.

Again, poor mental management. We let our imaginations just run wild and rampant with these random things we pick up mostly from the media or from other people talking, and we allow ourselves to be really scared.

And so without really keen awareness, we can be stuck in the past or we can be stuck in the future. But rarely in the present, we can get stuck in confusion. We can get stuck in burnout. We can get stuck in anxiety. We can constantly be stalling out because the unconscious mind is just in this mode repeating this pattern again and again and again.

And we're trapped. And we don't know why because we lack the awareness. So here's the greatest news ever. This is so awesome. And with with modern technology, we can actually, there are videos, I've watched videos of new neural connections forming some they caught it on camera. So cool. And you can see pictures of it. And then you can see that when you make create a new neural pathway.

because of your new consciousness, you can actually break and dissolve an old neural pathway. So that's called neuroplasticity. We literally can strengthen our brain function. We can change the way our brain works, even into old age. Okay. Now that that's, that's blowing some old beliefs and some lack of awareness for a lot of people. And they have these monitors. Now they can literally watch this happen. It is so amazing.

Rachel Denning (31:34.446)
So there's total neuroplasticity. We can change the way we think. We can alter the way our brain operates. And so if we're having 60 to 90 ,000 thoughts a day and 90 % of them are autopilot, they're just going, the very first essential step is that we become conscious of what we're thinking and why. And the direct connection of those thoughts to our outcomes.

So I'm going to go a little sciencey here with three parts of your brain. We have the prefrontal cortex that kind of sits behind your forehead. We have the amygdala, which if I remember right is kind of buried deep in the middle. And then we have a cool little hippocampus, which that's just the coolest name ever. I think those are kind of behind the ears. So let me just, just real quick, there's three parts, okay? Just three simple parts of the brain and how they work together. Cause this,

this all plays into our awareness. The prefrontal cortex is in charge of making choices and taking action, right? It's decisions. And when we dramatically increase our awareness, the prefrontal cortex gets stronger, so to speak. It just gets better, right? There's more activity there. We're better at making choices and taking action.

Right. And, and the prefrontal cortex, especially in youth, is still developing and working until they're like 23 or 25. and, and we've got to exercise that again. And most of us are unaware that we can do exercises to strengthen our prefrontal cortex of making better decisions and taking action. Isn't that awesome? That's being proactive. Like that, that right there, proactivity is, is, is awesome. It's all part of the prefrontal cortex. Right.

Then there's the amygdala and this one is to alert us to danger, right? And this is where a lot of, there's kind of two things. It happens in the hippocampus and the amygdala where it's the fight or flight mode. We often hear fight or flight and there's another F there, freeze. Fight, flight or freeze. Now for a lot of people, this is just.

Rachel Denning (33:59.342)
This baby's overgrown, so to speak, right? It's just out of control for so many of you. It's just this constant fight, flight, or freeze. And then, you know, related to this is the hippocampus, which kind of decides what's important. And this is where there's a lot of fear, a lot of fears here. And again, this one's kind of out of control with people. And so as we increase in awareness, right, of mindfulness,

of consciousness, of observation, of presence. This gets smaller, so to speak, right? They get, again, we're training them. We're literally training the brain. So for many people, the amygdala and the hippochemist are just firing like crazy and they're constantly living in fear and they're in fight or flight mode, right? You're either, again, just fight, flight or freeze. Like, are you often angry and upset and irritated?

And are you or are you just in avoidance patterns? You want to get away all the time. You're constantly avoiding your turning to buffers, right? You're just constantly moving or you just stuck here. You're not making decisions. You're not taking action. You hesitate, you procrastinate, you second guess yourself just and very often literally it's just it's because of a lack of awareness.

Like this, this stuff just blows my mind and I love it. And I hope, I hope you're being fascinated by this and I hope you're loving it and realizing that, that each of us, myself included, all of us can increase in our awareness. And the more we improve our awareness, the more now we can literally work on our neuroplasticity and the way our brain functions and get the clarity that true high performers are operating with all the time because they're so keenly aware.

of what's happening and they're literally making conscious decisions and they're every day they're training their brain and making new neural connections and new neural pathways. They're training their brain to think differently. And so they're operating with making clear good choices and taking action in the prefrontal cortex and not operating back in the amygdala or the hippocampus, hippocampus where, you know, we're just constantly in fear, fight, flight, freeze.

Rachel Denning (36:18.606)
Think about that. Think how many times you are worrying.

just so worried about something that may never happen. And we're letting our imaginations just run wild. And or there's a connection to the past where you're holding on to something that happened. And in your imagination then runs to the future if it can happen again, it could be worse and all this stuff. I mean, we can get ourselves into an absolute mess. And this dramatic rise in anxiety is part of that. My estimation.

with working with so many people, my observations are that anxiety and anxiety attacks are becoming more and more frequent because there's less and less mental management. And again, lack of awareness, people aren't aware and given the opportunity to control and direct their thoughts and keep them in line and get them under control and separate fact from feeling. Most of our fear is just a feeling, you guys. And we separate.

You know, we got to be able to see, well, this is, this is a feeling I'm having. Why am I having a feeling? Well, it's cause of thought. What thought am I having? Why am I imagining all these things? Well, is that a fact? Are your imaginations a fact? No, they're not. And so we can separate the facts and the feelings. You with me here? Like this is so awesome. And so our awareness then leads to perception, which leads to reality. So our awareness or lack thereof leads to our perception, how we perceive.

ourselves, how we perceive others, how we perceive the world. For many of you, your perception of yourself is your greatest weakness.

Rachel Denning (38:03.918)
Let that sink in. Your perception of yourself is your greatest weakness. Mostly because you don't believe in yourself.

And right now, I literally can see your mind doing things right now because I say that. So you don't believe in yourself. You're like, well, yeah, it's because that one time I did this and I did this. And, and, and so you're going in the past, right? And you're replaying those old records and you're going to auto, you know, unconscious mode, or you're jumping into the future and worrying and like, yeah, but how can I believe in myself? Cause what if I fail? And then if I fail and I embarrass myself, what will other people think of me? And then, then they won't like me. And then.

I won't have any friends and then I'll probably end up in the gutter dying alone in some strange land. We let our imagination run wild. Once we have this old operating software that's just the, again, the unconscious mind just literally directing everything in our lives and it's out of control. So this perception, awareness creates perception, perception creates reality. And so you and I and what glorious,

wonderful news this is we have the power to reframe. We can reframe our thoughts like we create new thinking patterns and that reframes our feelings, our emotions right which then drive our actions and our choices and our decisions right and we're really strengthening the pre -frontal

prefrontal cortex and the operations of the brain. And we get to this place, my friends, where we literally have less stress and more results. We have less tension and more good feelings. And we have less overwhelm and more rewards. And we calm or eliminate our fears.

Rachel Denning (40:07.662)
and calm and eliminate like our insecurities and our regrets and the things from the past. You see this? Isn't this amazing? So the things that you and I are constantly wrestling with, we're going to be so aware now, we're going to practice awareness and mindfulness. And I want you just to start asking yourself, why do you think what you think? Why do you believe what you believe? Why do you do what you do?

every part of your life, just start asking, why do you eat what you eat? Why do you eat when you eat? Why do you like, why are you going through these motions and these motions and emotions? And really like, this is awesome. I love this exercise. You might even just, just track maybe, maybe this week you track, you just track your actions. Like you just, because some of us are literally doing stuff all the time or unaware of, we don't even know we're doing it.

We might have nervous twitches. We might be saying, all the time. We might be, I, and watch, start watching for this. Like people are constantly twirling their hair or twitching or pushing their hair back or grabbing their shirt or straightening their buttons or, or fidgeting their hands or clicking their fingers or tapping. I mean, watch, just watching people do. And then you can ask and just say, Hey, do you know you do that? And they're like, what? what? I know. And like, we have, we have all these unconscious actions. Like we'll even like, we'll get up and we'll just,

jump on, let's turn on the news or immediately just open up and start scrolling through messages or we have these actions we do unconsciously. Then after you've kind of tracked your actions, you can literally track your feelings. So what did I feel? And just track your feelings all day long. This awareness, like, what did I feel? What did I feel? Whoa, man, feeling just changed. Wow. What triggered that? And then awareness of like, no, it was cause I saw so -and -so. Well, why did that trigger it?

it's because it reminded me of boom. And then you get this awareness of like, what in the world? I literally have allowed myself to become onry or frustrated or sad or depressed or discouraged. Every day or every week or whatever you know I'm talking about. Maybe it's every, every Monday, boom, you go in this funky mode or every Sunday or every Wednesday, every time you see somebody or every time you see something, it's triggering you. And you're screaming these emotions that you don't want in your life anymore. And when you get this

Rachel Denning (42:32.302)
this awareness, you can look at it and go, wait a minute. I don't, I don't have to be triggered by that. I'm going to create a new trigger, a new anchor. I'm going to create a new awareness because I don't want to feel like that anymore. And so you can literally switch it. You have that power. So now every time I see that person, I'm going to seek charity.

because that person probably had a really rough life and they're struggling and they're trying to make it right and they're trying to figure this out. Or every time I worry, I catch myself worrying and I'm feeling all kinds of anxiety. I'm so tense, right? I'm speaking hypothetically here for all of you, like, because I know a lot of you just live with a lot of tension and you're feeling so tense. You're like, man, why are you tense? Why?

Why are your shoulders up in your ears and you so much tension in your neck and your back? You can see it on your face. Why are you so tense? I don't know. I don't know. And don't accept. I don't know from yourself. Why are you so tense? And the awareness comes in. You're like, I'm really worried. What are you worried about? And you start thinking that here comes the awareness. And again, don't sometimes the initial answer is the right answer. Sometimes it's just kind of a.

cop out, like you get to the real answer and like, it's not, it's not what I thought it was. I'm actually deeply, deeply worried of what people think about me. If this project doesn't work or if for some reason I fail and we get this awareness that our imagination is playing in the background.

Our unconscious mind is literally playing in the background, coming up with fears and worries and anxieties. It's causing all kinds of tension. Now we've got pain in our neck and our upper back and our lower back and our knees and ankle. And like we're, we're just kind of hurting and frustrating and we're kind of irritated, a little edgy with people. We're not real pleasant to be around. And when we get awareness, we realize, my goodness. My unconscious mind has been playing these records in the back.

Rachel Denning (44:54.798)
causing all these emotions and feelings and actions and words. And I don't need that anymore. And so it's gone. It's out of my life. I love this stuff. So the first big essential ingredient, the foundation for all your success and happiness in life is dramatically increasing your awareness. So practice it today and every day where we step into extreme ownership of every part of our lives.

And we are keenly aware of the relationship between our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, our actions, our habits, our character, our circumstances, even everything that's going on and whether we are reactive or proactive and the more clear awareness we have, the more power we have. There literally is power.

in being fully present with yourself. this is awesome. I love this stuff. So let's practice awareness and watch how it transforms your life. And one of the, this is one of the biggest, the first things I do. And if you, and I'm sorry, I'm offering this because if you want some help with this, one of the first things I do when I'm coaching with people is when they sign up, they go to Gregdating .com, sign up for a coaching session, initial consultation, like coaching session. And I send over a, an assessment.

It's a full life personal assessment. And it is so enlightening and so powerful. It gives so much insight to them and to me of where they are and where they're going and why. Right. And then we sit down, we start talking and we talk through it. I asked the right questions and bring about awareness. Like literally, it's what we're doing in these coaching sessions is we're just bringing out awareness of what's happening in your life and why and what's not happening in your life.

and why. And so that awareness is literally the first big step to total transformation. So if you want some more awareness, sign up for coaching session, take an assessment. You can even do the 28 day challenge. You can jump in the group coaching, like just any kind of contact with coaching and it with a, with a great group of people and any kind of tracking that's going on there, getting the training that is what's going to bring this awareness amount. And literally a lot of you,

Rachel Denning (47:21.102)
are kind of struggling along and hitting up against obstacles and barriers that you're just really frustrated about. And the only reason it's still a barrier or an obstacle is simply because you're not aware of it, of what's causing it and why. And for many things, and this happens for many of the people I work with, as soon as they become aware of it, it's gone. Isn't that awesome? As soon as we become aware of it, some of our obstacles will just go away.

simply because now we are aware of them. Like, man, I've been feeling really irritated for years. And it was all because of this. And that's all, it's just my unconscious mind playing in the background. And that's not true. I'm not really bothered by that. And why am I letting it disturb my peace? Now that I have awareness of it, I'm going to choose to be peaceful every day. And boom, done.

I got it. It's so powerful. So awesome. So work on that awareness, make it happen. Love you guys. Reach upper.