#90 Will You Be Broken or Beautiful? Picking up the pieces of your life.

Rachel Denning (00:01.934)
Hey my friends, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. I am in Phuket, Thailand. It's five o 'clock in the morning, so it's... Nope, there goes the noises. I'm standing outside and I'm literally in this gorgeous garden out by the pool. It's just this tropical, beautiful paradise. It's totally dark out.

There's still a bright full moon looking right at it right now. It's just unbelievable, but I'm the only one out here. So I was gonna say no guarantee on the noises. You just heard something drive past and who knows what'll happen out here in the noises when we're outside. But I have the most exciting and powerful message that I wanna share. As we were exploring Bangkok, they have these.

incredible temples there that are hundreds of years old and very famous and some of them are UNESCO World Heritage Site. They're just beautiful and they're very unique. I've seen temples, ancient temples and modern temples all over the world and these are quite unique and they have these, they usually have like a big kind of

temple in the middle or some kind of... like in one we saw the reclining Buddha that was gigantic. He was enormous. I was very, very surprised by his size and there was a beautiful building built around him. But what impressed me so much was these pillars that in each of the temples we went to and visited, one was Wat Arun and then Wat...

pole I think was another one I saw and they have these massive pillars and they kind of or spires that they're they're wider at the bottom and then they just kind of go up to a small point and they're just stunning and from far away you can tell they're just they're gorgeous and the Sun will hit them and they just sparkle and light up and they're they're so colorful and in one of the temples I think each of the each of the spires was a

Rachel Denning (02:28.718)
different color and different shade and they're so impressive. And then as you get closer, you realize that they're put together with individual tiles, little tiles, like an inch around or some of a couple inches. And my most favorite ones were just, the designs were all flowers, just bright, colorful flowers all the way up. Some of them,

50 feet high, some of them 100 feet higher or more and just pieced together with individual tiles to make these gorgeous colors and presentations. They are stunning, stunning and spectacular. And then you get even closer and here's where it hit home.

you get even closer and you realize that they're pieced together with broken fragments of pottery.

And it hit me. It stunned me. Like here are these gorgeous monuments. These pillars of beauty and wonder and awe that millions of people come to see every year. Others make pilgrimages and others go into those temple areas and pray every day or worship.

I was blown away and they are put together with broken pieces of pottery. And some of them were kind of like rough looking kind of. When you get up really close you're like, man.

Rachel Denning (04:18.445)
This thing that was so stunning from a distance and even remotely close, now it's, I mean, it's kind of rough and broken edges and it looks like things that you would find in a pile of broken shards and pieces and things that had been tossed aside. And that's when it hit me. That's when the big lesson just struck me with so much force as they had taken.

things and made a beautiful monument, a gorgeous legacy. And there it was. There was the lesson for me and for life and for you and I both to take a lesson and walk away with of are we going to be broken or beautiful?

Will the experiences of our lives and the hard times and the mistakes and the failed attempts, will they be a pile of broken rubbish or will they be a pillar of beauty and wonder that literally is a legacy?

that we leave behind not just for our children and grandchildren, but great grandchildren and for many others. And it comes down to just a powerful choice and mindset and a commitment to that kind of life and that kind of experience and the things we're going to do with ourselves and our experiences.

and what we're doing, right? So literally your tower of success, so to speak, will be built by the shattered pieces of your failed attempts and your mistakes and the lessons you learned from all the initial efforts you made that didn't work. You with me? This is so amazing. And.

Rachel Denning (06:35.789)
And now as I look back at my own life...

and I look at all the broken pieces and I invite you to do the same with me here.

I look back at all the broken pieces and neither of us can change the past. But we can change the way we see the past. And we can change what we do with what we see. And maybe you haven't done this yet. And today will be the catalyst. It'll be a new beginning of where you start building.

your pillar of beauty out of your pile of broken things. But because we can't change it, we can learn from it, we can grow from it, we can actually take it, something that we've seen as a remorseful, painful, ugly thing in our lives. Something we viewed as

as a scar and as this horrendous thing we wish wasn't a part of our lives or our pasts. And we can take the pieces and build something beautiful. Wow, Matt, can you feel this?

Rachel Denning (08:07.629)
I'm getting emotional here. Can you f -

feel this please. The things that have caused you so much pain and so much hurt that have been this thing you've been trying to hide and cover up that you've been ashamed of.

that you just constantly regret.

and hurt from it, wish wasn't there, that hidden thing, or maybe it's out in the open and it just causes so much hurt. We can take these broken pieces and literally build something beautiful of ourselves and of our lives and of a legacy.

and you can take these incredibly difficult experiences that you and I have had, and we can build, literally build something that helps not only us, but helps so many others. And I had to do that with my life. The things that went wrong, the things that other people did and the things that I did, and take those pieces and...

Rachel Denning (09:37.069)
Decide instead of seeing them as this terrible thing that happened that I wish hadn't

as a really difficult thing that gave me strength, that taught me a lesson, that helped me become who I'm becoming, that have shaped the way I see myself, the way I see others, the way I see the world, that it's actually now I see how I switched. Now I look back at the incredibly difficult experiences I had or even the failed attempts and I'm actually

really grateful for them. Now maybe that will take you some time and processing to get to a place where you're grateful for what's happened. But I genuinely am deeply grateful and I have been for years now.

almost so point like I'm so glad that I had the hardest of hard times that I went through some excruciating moments because if I hadn't, I'm afraid I might have not developed the strength that I do now. And the insight and the understanding. You with me? Like, and we can, we can take these pieces and build something or.

My friends, here's a warning. If we don't take those pieces, they will just sit there in a pile of broken fragments and shards and rubbish. And all these valuable resources, these incredibly precious assets will just sit in a pile.

Rachel Denning (11:27.469)
And they won't be inspiring. And they won't be strengthening. And they won't create something beautiful. They'll just remain as a pile. And I know this is a lot. And I know I'm challenging and inviting and hitting, for some, I'm going to be hitting some very sensitive topics here. I realize that. And I know some of you have been through some horrendous things.

And this, when I say broken things, it may mean so much to so many. And so I wanna give some examples here, but I really wanna invite you, just even consider it. If some of you, it's still raw and painful, I wanna just even invite you to consider it. Like, how could you take the things that have happened and start building a new...

A new level of strength and confidence and courage and what has made you timid and afraid can make you confident and bold. And what you think has made you ugly and scarred can actually make you stunningly beautiful and radiant. We can take this with every part of our lives, right?

we can look at ourselves individually and personally.

and the mistakes and failures we've had even internally, whether it's been mental or emotional, or externally in our words or actions, things we said or didn't say, things we did or didn't do, and who we've become and what we've tried to do or failed to do or neglected to do.

Rachel Denning (13:16.141)
We can take those. There are countless stories of people who were negligent of themselves and then used that as a catalyst to transform their lives and then transform other people's lives with their story and their strength by saying, you know what? No more. No more. And making these transformations, right? And overcoming what they thought they had...

done that was beyond repair. And honestly, some things may be on repair. You can't undo everything. But no matter what's happened, I wholeheartedly believe we can transform. In a marriage, it might be the misunderstanding that happens.

particularly early on when you're trying to live with another human being and then another human being that is of the opposite sex and thinks differently from you and acts different from you and processes differently from you and into a point where you're like You guys know I'm talking about when you're and it may still be happening in your marriage In fact, we were talking about this because this is we're leading a couples trip right now

And we were talking about this like it's there's just this classic thinking of for men and classic thinking for women where you know the wife especially we were talking about this how early on she was giving these hints that the husband was supposed to pick up about things she wanted him to do and the husband and I did this was like

Well, I didn't get anything. I saw no hint and she's like how could you not pick up that hint that that's what I wanted and needed you to do it like we didn't you didn't say that you just There was nothing she's like I was hinting it I didn't do I have to tell you everything and and the guy's like yeah You do you have to tell me everything you can't just sit there and hint about these things that you need from me You need to tell me. All right, I remember Rachel and I having these conversations early on

Rachel Denning (15:34.159)
like, babe. And because it was a misunderstanding, because it was this...

like painful part of trying to navigate ways of thinking, ways of acting, ways of interaction, like the way we, the literally our philosophy on life and the world and marriage and everything, we have to figure out how to navigate that. And so the painful misunderstandings of me saying the wrong thing or Rachel saying the wrong thing or me, me even failing to do what my spouse needed or wanted, those painful,

things early on, Rachel and I decided because we wanted to strengthen our marriage and literally build the extraordinary marriage that we have and are continuing to improve, it was built on mistakes. It was built on misunderstandings. And yet, tragically, we see couples all the time that instead of taking the broken pieces and starting to build their extraordinary marriage,

They just keep adding more broken pieces to the pile. And I learned of a couple on this trip, I learned of a couple who still doing the same thing. They are, you know, they're, they're roughly 20 years into their marriage and they are still like perpetually, deeply painfully in this.

adding to the pile of misunderstandings of hinting but never expressing, of mutual neglect and misunderstanding. And as individuals, you know, complaining, hurting, their marriage is, they're together but it's basically dead.

Rachel Denning (17:28.845)
And it's because of these very things I'm talking about, instead of learning from them, building them, picking up the pieces and building an extraordinary marriage and making this stunning mosaic of love and romance and wonder and beauty out of these broken pieces, they're just adding to the pile perpetually. And all their marriage is is just 20 years of brokenness. And that breaks my heart.

and hurt so bad because they could build something like these pillars I saw, but they don't. And you guys, the same is true with parenting. Whether it's you with your parents and things went bad or you as a parent with your children, because I guarantee.

that you, like me, have made parenting mistakes. my goodness, especially with the first child, right? It's like, the poor first child is the experiment.

They are the experimental being of how to be a parent. And we adopted our first and we got her, they called us at 8 o 'clock and asked us to pick her up from the airport at noon. So we had four hours and we went and we picked up our baby and then we got in the car and we're like, now what do we do? I think we should probably go to the grocery store and maybe we should go buy some things?

You guys, we had like no warning, no preparation. The adoption papers went in and we had a baby fast. And there we were trying to figure out how to be parents.

Rachel Denning (19:17.581)
And now, and that's obviously, this is our first go around, right? We have seven kids and this is every day is the first time we've been in that day with our kind of family and their ages and the makeup and the dynamics of our family. We're just trying to figure this out. It's a big experiment. And so you make a lot of mistakes and then your kids start.

when they're cute and little and they just adore you and they need you for everything and they do what you say or they will if you're gonna you tell them you better do that or I'll paddle your little diaper and okay and even when you when you reprimand and they'll come hug you and then they get older and all of a sudden you say something and they say something back and now that

Right? We make mistakes towards them, but then sometimes they make mistakes towards us. And we as parents can hold onto that. and then it becomes this pain point. Ouch. Right. And now I know, cause I work with parents literally every week, every, almost every day. In fact, every day I'm working with couples or parents. And so it can become now this deep painful and you have a pile.

of broken things from the things your kids have said or done to you. And if we're not careful, we end up with a pile for each child.

And again, I ask bluntly, boldly with so much love, are you going to have a pile of broken things or a pillar of beauty?

Rachel Denning (21:03.021)
keep coming back to are you going to be broken or beautiful and the choice is ours because we can pick up just like that temple I'm gonna I have to keep repeating this so you can you can see that imagery we can pick up the broken things and make something beautiful or we can leave it there and lament it and hold on to it and bury the pain and those emotions and just you know now just bemoan parenting.

and we can get into self -loathing and we can throw the pity parties and we can hurt and we can cry and we can hold grudges and just be in this place of turmoil and anguish and bitterness. And there we are again, we can be bitter.

or we can be better. We can be broken or we can be beautiful. So what will you do? Will you pick up the broken pieces from your marriage and put them together and build an extraordinary marriage? Will you pick up the broken pieces in parenting and actually build a gorgeous relationship with your kids?

and become a far better parent and grandparent. Now some just, they throw in the towel and say, look at this pile, look at this pile of broken things and broken interactions and conversations and mistakes and pain both ways, mistakes I made, mistakes they made, things I said, things they said to me. And you can literally start building your mound and multiple mounds, just massive.

garbage dump. You with me? Like you can build a gigantic garbage dump, a landfill of all these broken things and you can bemoan your life and you can hate yourself and you can hate other people and you can hate parenting and you can hate marriage and you can look at all these things and say see it wasn't meant to be. there's some noise sorry you guys. And.

Rachel Denning (23:24.333)
You with me? And right at a powerful moment the guy has to walk past with the luggage cart. man. Never know what's gonna happen. But I really want you to feel this with me. What are you gonna do?

Are you gonna build up just piles and piles of broken experiences? And I'm not kidding you, every single week I meet with people who are feeling this.

and

And they tell me about the pain and the struggles and they've not done anything with the little broken pieces. That's literally why I'm making this today to give you hope and encouragement and strength and tell you that I've done it. Other people do it. I'm still doing it. I guarantee you I'm going to keep making mistakes and others are going to make mistakes towards me that we're going to make. We're going to try something and it's going to be a totally failed attempt. I know that's going to happen because

I am pushing my limits. I'm getting out of my comfort zone. I'm setting audacious gigantic dumb goals right demanding unrealistic meaningful bold

Rachel Denning (24:40.173)
I'm setting dumb goals and there's no way that I'm going to succeed at all of them because I'm stepping into the unknown. Every time I'm pushing my own limits, each new step is a step into an unknown for me. It's beyond the current limit I have. And so I'm going to make mistakes. And as I'm living boldly and audaciously and powerfully, you just hear that cat just came up and rubbed on my legs, some random cat.

random Thai cat rubbing my leg. As I move forward boldly, and I hope you do too, and I encourage you to live this way, you're gonna have plenty of little broken pieces of pottery, so to speak, with which to add to your pillar, or your new pillar, where you start building all kinds, instead of multiple piles, you have multiple pillars, and you're building your extraordinary life.

Right, and so as you go through the Extraordinary Family Life Formula, and if you don't have that yet, go to gregdenning .com and get it, it's free, the training there. As you go through the formula, you look at every element of the formula, you go through the foundation of the formula, and you put pieces all together and you realize there literally will be broken pieces with every element. With you, with your marriage, we talked about, with parenting we talked about, but with your lifestyle, with your habits.

with your finances. There's going to be so many opportunities to build something beautiful with broken things. And that takes a mindset shift and a heart set shift.

to see all these broken fragments, all these things that have gone wrong, these things that haven't worked out, all the mistakes you've made in failure, instead of seeing yourself as a failure, instead of racking that up as one more reason not to like yourself and one more reason why you don't realize why anyone would ever like or love you, one more reason to beat yourself up, you actually see it as there are some more pieces there to add to my pillar.

Rachel Denning (26:49.709)
My legacy, my power. You can see what I'm saying, you guys? We literally can take our past. We can take our failed attempts. We can take our mistakes and turn them into an asset, a strength.

something that's so wonderful and so powerful and actually gives us an advantage, gives us an edge. The thing you thought broke you makes you beautiful if you use it.

The thing that you believed had ruined you, it raises you.

are you feeling this? Please tell me you're feeling this. And if you, look, I know this isn't, what I'm saying is simple, but it's not easy. And I know some of you.

are going to need some help getting through this. I hope at least you're conceptualizing this saying, yeah, I want this. I want this. And if you need help doing it, like I had to go through this and it took me, I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have, I didn't have the training. I didn't have access to people who'd helped me do this. I just, I had to figure this out on my own, like by trial and error, but man, I was determined to figure it out. And I did. Otherwise I would still be dragging along all my broken pieces and bringing my baggage with me.

Rachel Denning (28:13.071)
me into my marriage, into my parenting, into my life. And trust me, I had baggage friends. Holy guacamole. I had this list of all the things people had done to me and how my life was so terrible in my teens and twenties because of mistakes other people had made. And where I'd been victimized, I'd been wronged, mistakes that I had made. And my goodness, I had a pile of emotional and psychological baggage that I was dragging along.

And I could have brought all that, loads and loads, suitcases and suitcases, cart loads of all that stuff. I could have brought it with me into my marriage, into my parenting, into my relationships, into my work. But I didn't. Instead, I actually built something beautiful out of those broken pieces. And I'm so grateful for that.

Literally from what I just said some of you are even gonna feel worse because you realize that you brought some of those broken pieces with you into your marriage and your parenting and your relationships and they're still there. And so what I'm offering is I want to help you do this and if you need help with it, go to Gregdenning .com and sign up for a coaching session.

or grab one of the courses, how to build an extraordinary marriage. We talk about how to get through that, the mindset and the heart set and how to build those relationships and change those things and fix the broken pieces. I have a full course on extraordinary parent mentoring. And we have the epic life planner to help. But I'm just, what I'm offering here is I want to help you. I want, I genuinely want to help you.

I feel like this right here, this message is part of my life's work. To help broken things become beautiful.

Rachel Denning (30:05.837)
instead of ruin, reward. Right?

instead of something that's embarrassing or painful, it's uplifting and it's powerful. And it's absolutely crucial that you and I are learning from our mistakes, that we're picking up the pieces, that we're making them a part of our tower. Otherwise...

Like I mentioned earlier, we just have our ground, so to speak. Our figurative space, our area of life is just covered with broken dreams. You're building something.

and we have to maintain that mindset for the long run. Otherwise we'll have a pile instead of a pillar. You're building something.

It's a construction site. It's not always pretty. And all the pieces and all your materials are sitting around and sometimes they do just look like a pile of rubbish. But I want to give you so much hope. Please be hopeful. Please be excited about this. Let this be uplifting. If you're feeling down right now, let this be a hope, a vision of what's possible, of what you can achieve, of how you can succeed.

Rachel Denning (31:39.213)
in making something absolutely extraordinary. So if you've ever felt like that you've ruined it, you've broken it, like it's beyond repair, like you have experienced something that's just, it's too far, it's too much. It can't be done. Let this message be a message of hope and light and a vision of what's possible.

and just like those stunning, stunning pillars of beauty and wonder and awe at these world heritage sites here in Thailand, let that be your life where you take the broken pieces and make something beautiful. And if you need some help, let me help you. But let's do it. Let's do it together. And so whatever your life story has been.

Whatever it is right now, you might be, you might literally be standing in a, in a pile of broken things at work or with a child or with a spouse or with a parent or with a sibling, with neighbors or friends, with finances, with yourself, with an addiction or a terrible habit with some.

great negligence. Whatever it is, my friends, let's pick up those broken pieces and make them beautiful.

I love this and it is an option. Awesome is always an option. And we can do this. We can put it together and make it happen. So let's do it my friends. Let me know how I can help reach upward.