#286 Attain Highly, Sacrifice Greatly: Here’s What We’ve Sacrificed to Create an Extraordinary Family Life

Rachel Denning (00:02.114)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your hosts, Greg and Rachel Denning. We got an awesome question today that we're excited to talk about. was fun discussing it yesterday because it's one of those questions that, for me at least, it kind of caught me off guard a little bit and I really had to think through the answer and we'll get into why that is. Because when initially,

When it happens, it's very different than looking back at it from this stage in life. Maybe that's confusing. So when the thing is happening is different than after you looking back. Exactly. So that hindsight is just totally different feeling and perspective versus in the moment you're like, it feels like such a big deal. And later on, you're like, that was like nothing. And so worth it. So basically, here's the question. She starts by quoting James Allen.

He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little. He who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. Man, I love that quote. I've loved that quote for a long, time. I memorized it at one point when I was reading James Allen frequently. And I remember thinking, I want to attain highly, so I'm willing to sacrifice greatly. Well, same for me, because we both did read a lot of James Allen early on.

that I loved that this was connected, the question was connected to the James Allen quote because it really made that connection for me back to those early days when we started our journey and having this vision given from James Allen and then realizing, we've achieved that vision. That's pretty amazing. And because we were so committed. We would talk about it all the time. We were constantly reading him and talking about it and saying, babe,

Let's sacrifice. Let's sacrifice greatly so that we can attain highly. Let's do it. And it was so incremental. Right. Even though our sacrifices weren't always incremental, but the outcomes kind of came over time. And now when you're in it, you're like, yeah, we didn't make those sacrifices and they seem like a big deal at the time. I guess. And I guess here's one of the things that is so important.

Rachel Denning (02:30.951)
It's hard to consider it a sacrifice if what you get back is more than what you gave. Well, that's part of the answer though. So, but you have to finish reading the So question, So here's the question. In line with this quote, what would you say are some sacrifices that you and Rachel have made to achieve the life you live now? If it's not too personal of a question. I think I've yet to have anyone ask me a question that is too personal.

But thank you for the consideration. Then as a follow up question, what advice would you give to people in order to overcome the fear of loss or sacrifice for something better? That's insightful because you're right. We get into our own heads and the fear of loss, the fear of failure, like what if I sacrifice this thing and it doesn't work out? Right. Right. That's super scary.

Or I'm going to make the sacrifice and I'm hoping it's something better. But what if it's not? What if I sacrifice something and the other side is like, this is garbage, which happens all the time. So let's start with question number one. What have we sacrificed to be able to achieve the life we live now? And so the initial sort of response that you kind of hinted at first was kind of like, wow, everything we have sacrificed has been infinitely worth it. So.

from where we are at this moment, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. Exactly. I think that's so important. Yeah. When it works out, you look back and you're like, ha! All day long. I was afraid of giving that up. Yeah. But now I have this. So I would gladly trade those trinkets for what I have now. I think that's super important perspective to hear from others, because when it's you, you're trying to look up the hill and you're like, I don't even know if this is going to work.

And what I'm sacrificing seems so big but those who've done it on the other side are looking back like man that's those are little things they feel big but they're so small. And I feel like sometimes you know with like you say every strength has an inherent weakness I feel like sometimes that has become at least for me one of my weaknesses because having gone through it I look at people and I'm like guys it's easy like why are you not willing to give this up it's so worth it.

Rachel Denning (04:53.496)
But I do recall, when I make myself recall, that from on the other side of it, it did. It felt like a huge deal. It felt like the biggest impossibility ever. I think about this with a lot of things, parenting, marriage, even food and diet, you know? Because I'm so convinced now about the diet.

that I've come back to after studying and going full circle for so long, that for now for me I just feel like, well, it's so worth it. Why would you not give it up? Why would you continue to eat those things? Why would you continue to do that when the benefits are so worth it? But I do know that for many people that's simply just this huge leap of faith. It's this huge unknown.

This is really big barrier. Would it be worth it? so difficult. Yeah. For me to completely eliminate all processed foods or whatever, you know, it just seems like so unreasonable. Maybe let's start there. That's probably not what people would expect. Like they ask, OK, Dennings, what did you sacrifice greatly to achieve highly? And we start with junk food and highly processed food and garbage. Like, yeah, that is funny. People don't think we would give that answer. But yet.

That is definitely a huge, key element of it. Because as you always love to emphasize, your body is the vehicle for experiencing life. And so our bodies are the vehicles for experiencing our extraordinary life. And as a result, we had to sacrifice foods that did not help us optimize our bodies so that we have the energy, the motivation, the ability to be able to live the life that we want to live. Because one of the other things I thought of,

as we were asked this question and discussing it is we had to sacrifice, and I don't want this to come across the wrong way because it can be interpreted totally wrong, but we had to sacrifice comfort and ease. Meaning, and the way I think of it is one time our oldest daughter was talking to some friends that were her age and she's in her 20s and.

Rachel Denning (07:07.138)
She was telling them about our life and all the things that we do and all the places that we go and that we homeschool and we have businesses and we travel the world. And their response was very interesting to me because they said, that sounds exhausting. Right? Rather than, my gosh, what an amazing life. What an epic, adventurous They've traveled to 60 countries. Wow. Their response was, that sounds exhausting.

And so One of the things we had to sacrifice was this life of comfort and ease where the hardest thing you do is not that hard. And then you come home and watch Netflix. We had to sacrifice that. We don't do that. That's not our life. Our life is very busy. We are extremely highly productive. But that's because we're intentionally doing things all day long to be productive.

And yet, we also have a comfortable life. That's why it could be misinterpreted, because it's not like we have an uncomfortable, miserable life. We have a great life. We don't sleep on the floor and let the bugs in and Right. We have a luxurious life. And we still take our ease at times. We're probably going to go to the beach after this podcast episode. You know what I mean?

We have plenty of comfort and ease, but not... Nobody ever would call us lazy. Yeah, right. And nobody would accuse us of, you know, sacrificing opportunities or productivity for convenience or the comforts or... And I think you're right. That's a little bit of semantics there because a lot of people, like they're only pursued in life and they may not even...

say this cognitively like my pursuit is comfort they wouldn't but what they end up doing is everything in their life is for more comfort more convenience more ease they're just chasing that down like anything that can stop the pain just working is so hard and all these hard things we we didn't play that game and at the same time avoiding those things that would require additional effort

Rachel Denning (09:27.11)
And that is one of the sacrifices. Because you're right, I think the default for many people is they're pursuing a life that's leading to a.k.a. retirement. And so as a result, they're constantly trying to make their life easier, more comfortable, more convenient. And so then to pursue something that puts all of that in danger,

is uncomfortable. requires additional effort. It requires effort above and beyond what you've been doing. And that's the sacrifice you have to make. You have to be willing to sacrifice all of that comfort and ease and luxury and convenience and be able to do the extra work so that you can obtain the greater rewards. So that one's even a little bit hard to articulate, but we definitely walked away from

comfort, convenience, ease, this idea of kind of keeping up with the Joneses, you know, doing what everyone else is doing. We totally set aside for years the nice house and the nice car and those kind of things and stuff. And was very intentional early on. You know, now we have a big nice house and we have nice things and all of that is great. But it was almost like that came as an

outcome of pursuing another way of life rather than the other way around. And so we were willing to sacrifice those things in the beginning so that we could pursue more meaning and purpose in life. And as a result, we were able to, I guess, have both. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Which I think is crazy important because if we had pursued

owning lots of stuff and things, furniture and decorations and all the bling bling and whatever. We might have attained all that and then we for sure would have missed out on all the memories and adventures and all the great things and the growth. Yes, we would have we would have sacrificed the growth for stuff. But because we set aside the stuff and we are chasing growth like that is one thing we've always done. We absolutely chase growth period and we still do.

Rachel Denning (11:51.662)
growth is our priority and self-improvement, family improvement. So we've chased that and because we grew so much and continue to grow so much then all these other benefits come back. so in a way you're like, again cognitively you're like we didn't sacrifice it, we have all these amazing things, it's great but we did have was a long time when we didn't have them.

We had to choose, like, what are we going to do? Are we going to follow the traditional path? Are we going to get a nice set of furniture? Or are we going to go have an epic, uncomfortable adventure? That was very important. Yeah, so definitely early on, we were actually sacrificing a lot of physical things. it was very significant for us because one of the things we were talking about yesterday is that

Greg and I both kind of grew up in a bit of a poverty mentality. There were times when our families had to receive welfare help or help from other people. And I know when we were first married, first of all, the career opportunity until you're 65 with the 401k, that was our dream. And we achieved it and we thought we've arrived. This is the best thing that could ever happen to us, But as far as

stuff went, we were both so obsessed with having things. I just remember people would give stuff away for free and I'd be like, yes, I'll take it. I want it. We were the people who would get on Craigslist and they're like, hey, this is free, just come pick it up. we're like, we're going. We're going to get this free stuff. so having all of that stuff, even though I would look back at that now and say this is all junk.

But having it just becoming hoarders. Yeah, it just felt so important and so necessary. And so we did go through a period of time where we literally got rid of pretty much everything. that was for us a very necessary sacrifice. Super formative. So OK, so at one point, you know, becoming minimalists and then then really essentialists like keeping only what's essential. That was in a very important. Right.

Rachel Denning (14:14.254)
part of our journey, sacrificing our security blanket of stuff. Sacrificing our connection and obsession with things in order and in our mind at the time we were exchanging that for experience because because early on we didn't have the funds or ability to travel and have a home, we couldn't afford to do both. So we that's a good example.

It's like we either travel and have adventures or we have a home and we put the home on the altar. Yeah, so we gave that up so that we could have the experiences that came from travel. important. I think one thing that we did for for sure sacrificed was entertainment. We live in an age of entertainment and we love entertainment. it's not like we're like that's lame. We love movies. We love entertainment. love

all the fun things that people love to do. But we realized like most people are literally entertaining themselves to death and they're taking their families with them. And we just said, you know, as much as we like watching TV and movies and I loved watching sports, I grew up as an athlete. I thought, no, I don't want to do that. And so Rachel, I committed we're not getting a TV and we were going to buy books.

As newlyweds, As newlyweds, and we started a family. And so we just bought books. And so we sacrificed entertainment for books. And then we sacrificed like leisure time or, I don't know, fluffy time, frivolous time. whatever. chitty-chatting with whoever, staring at the wall, listening to music, blah, blah. We sacrificed that for reading to and listening to books. Even I remember when I consciously said, I'm not listening to the radio ever again.

Like we're not gonna listen to radio. I'm gonna listen to audiobooks. And back then, mean, we were listening to cassette tapes and then books on CD. And then finally MP3 books. I'm like, let's go. So we did, we sacrificed.

Rachel Denning (16:27.73)
superficial conversations, shallow conversations and shallow entertainment and just tons of empty time. Yeah, so besides the entertainment time, because you're right, when we were first married, we literally had no TV. We watch more movies now than we ever did, know, newlyweds or for many years of our lives. But.

We trade, the point is not that we just cut it out because if you just cut it out, it's kind of pointless. You could actually, if you had to choose between doing nothing and watching a movie, actually watching a movie is more beneficial. But if you're gonna watch a movie or study and learn about personal growth and development, that's the better option, right? And so that's what we did. We sacrificed all of that time and devoted it instead to personal development.

But then, kind of, you touched on this piece of the frivolous time and, for lack of a better term, it was, we gave up lot of friend time. We didn't seek out a lot of social engagements or social time with friends because, and I know that this can sound callous, it wasn't helping us with our goals. It wasn't helping us achieve the things that we wanted to. Now, the ones that were helping us, we invested heavily in it.

you know, the friendships that were aligned with our desires and outcomes, like we invested in those and we still have great friends that have lasted a lifetime. But the rest of it, we gave up. In fact, we used to have the term for it, we called it...

tribal events or something, you know, like we don't do tribal events. do not participate in tribal events. Right. And so there was a lot of church functions and social functions and just friend hangout time that we just were like, nope, nope. And not that we wouldn't. We would try it. We would give it a try. It's not like we were just hermits. But if we felt like, no, this is not contributing to what we're after, we just then slowly. It was it was a process, actually. We kept trying.

Rachel Denning (18:41.004)
Yeah, we did. Let's go do this. This time it'll be different. We'll go make it better. It'll be beneficial. Add value to our lives. We just kept trying and we kept realizing like that doesn't add any value to my life, man. Yeah, I'm going somewhere. I have goals and dreams like I'm chasing greatness. I'm not going to sit around and just talk about the weather. out. neighbors. And so we kept trying and then eventually we're just, you know, smacking our heads like.

as much as we want it to be beneficial, it's not. As much as we want it to be meaningful, we're trying to direct the conversation, we're just really trying to force it to be beneficial, it wasn't. And so we did, we sacrificed that crap. Now we're out, we're done. We're not playing around. That also included a lot of church and community things as well. Like we've been very deliberate about, we both grew up in a church that has a lot of...

expected involvement per se. Lots of activities. Yeah, lots of activities, lots of meetings, lots of things. And we just said no to a lot of them. We're like, no, we're not going to all the meetings. We're not going to all the activities. We're not doing certain callings or expected things because we have a mission and purpose. And that's what we're pursuing. And this just doesn't fit into that. Now, that's very different from people who are like, they just don't participate at all.

so that they can watch more Netflix or do more of nothing or more of nowhere. It's like we were.

to, we were anxiously engaged in a good cause. Right. And we were going after it. I mean, we've had noble targets and aims and we've been out genuinely seeking to have real impact and make a difference in the world. Like we're chased, genuinely chasing greatness. And so we're sacrificing what is good for what is better. Yeah. And that's important.

Rachel Denning (20:44.022)
That's another element here is like, what do you sacrifice? Sacrifice good things for great things. Right. And that's an important piece of this. And I guess part of what we're saying here, just to articulate it differently, is we sacrificed social expectations. Yeah, definitely. We were willing to say no to the things that were socially expected of us if they did not align with what it was we were trying to achieve. And deal with the kickback.

And the criticism that comes with that, we sacrificed the good. So quote the good opinions of others, including family members or friends with well-meaning people like we're going to live unconventionally. What you're going to ruin your family, you're going to ruin your kids lives. They're going to get whatever blah, blah, blah, blah. Go on and on. And that started when we thought, know, we're going to homeschool. here it comes. We're going to do home birth. What you guys are a bunch of weirdo hippies. And it comes all down and everybody.

and all other things. So we sacrifice that. guess, how do we articulate that? You sacrifice this avoidance of conflict, right? Because so many people go along there, I just want to avoid conflict. I just want to avoid, I don't want to, what's the wording? You don't want to stir things up. You don't want to tip things over. You don't want to ruffle any feathers. And we're trying to go along through life.

Just like, let's not, let's not upset anyone. And we sacrifice that. like, no, I'm to upset anybody. I don't even care. So I sacrifice the opinions of others that don't care. Which actually kind of is funny because I am one of those that does kind of care. But I guess I didn't care enough that I would allow it to affect my actual decisions because I know there are people who are like, I can't do that because my neighbor down the street who I see every day would think it was weird or that something was wrong with me.

I would always be willing to, not that I would confront that person, but I would do it anyways and then I would just be like, well, I guess, you can't have a conversation because this is what I'm doing, right? I would be willing to give up those relationships, I guess. And for a lot of people, that seems harsh. And I understand why that does seem harsh. But if you want to build your life and your family, you have to be willing to sacrifice the opinions of other people.

Rachel Denning (23:05.73)
Like who cares what the neighbor thinks or the person in the church or this whatever. your mother in or your own mother. Or even your own mother sometimes. Who cares? You have to create what it is you want to create regardless of what other people are going to think, or do. We've got to put this in context though because if you're just genuinely being weird and you're doing something that's dumb. And you are messing up your And you're messing up your kids and your life and people are trying to stop you, you should listen.

We're not about that, but if you know you are genuinely chasing greatness and others even with the best intentions are holding you back or trying to keep you mediocre or small, say you know what, hey love you, I'm going. I'm doing this anyways. And that is an important aspect of course because that's the point of that sort of social behavior in humans. Like we're trying to protect each other from doing something that's really damaging.

And so we would take it into consideration. If somebody said something, we would think about it. We would analyze it and be like, are we messing up our kids? Are we making a mistake here? And we've asked those questions to ourselves many times over the years. But ultimately, we had enough belief and confidence in what we were doing to say, no, this, yeah, they think we're crazy, but this is the right path. This is what we need to do. And it has paid off.

so many times over. So much so that like we were saying in the beginning it doesn't feel like they were even sacrifices because our life is so good. Right. So here some other things like we you know as you as you go along thinking about this like what are things we sacrificed.

Rachel Denning (24:48.256)
looking back, you can walk through it and say, there was quite a, there was quite a few things, but some of them, were little things. So I was just thinking about our marriage. Our marriage is just amazing. What do we have to sacrifice to have such an amazing marriage? Well, one of them was like the desire to be right. You know, well, I'm right. cares? So pride or ego.

Sacrifice your ego. Just send it arrow right through your ego. Who cares? Sacrifice the ego. Sacrifice the win. I meet people all time. like, they just have this insatiable need to win arguments. Like, stop. Doesn't even matter. Or you, okay, we had to sacrifice our fixed mindsets and our limiting beliefs.

Absolutely. And man, I had a lot of them. I had a ton of them. Yeah. And I did kill them all. And well, and then I had to unlearn things that I had learned. That's painful. You had to unbelieve things that you believed in. Right. So adamantly to realize, oops, that wasn't working. But I was so convicted and I and maybe you'd spent months or years pursuing something you realize that was stupid and you have to walk away. Yeah.

You have to walk away from everything you put in. You and I both multiple times invested time, money and effort into something that realized that was a waste. And instead of keeping it, instead of holding on to it, instead of continuing down that path, because we already put so much time and effort into it. don't want to be failures. So zero based thinking. we're like, we just ripped that bandaid off. It's like it goes. You're like, yeah, but you spent thousands and thousands of dollars on that. Like, yeah, but it's not where we.

want to go. It's not who we want to be. So it's gone. Yeah. So those were sacrifices here. Another sacrifice we made was we have spent well over one hundred thousand dollars, probably approaching two hundred thousand dollars in personal and professional development in books, courses, webinars, masterminds, coaching. Like we have invested

Rachel Denning (27:16.358)
so much money into growth. And of course, it pays off massively. Right. But it often was a big sacrifice. I mean, I remember a couple of times when we were going to spend $10,000 on a program and we had to put it on a credit card or just felt like we can't afford this. But we were willing to make that sacrifice because we viewed it as an investment. yeah, it paid off. It worked out. We've also spent

Many many tens of thousands of dollars on experiences for our self-centered kids Especially with the kids you know they need to have this experience. would say hundreds of thousands of Easy. We spent tens of thousands this year. and and you're like yeesh, we could have put that in a savings account. We could have put it in an investment account. Could have saved it for their college. Bought nice things. could yeah save it for their wedding gifts or

buy more vehicles or stuff and things. And you realize, well, I guess here's a framework that I'll share that is hopeful and hopefully helpful for people. We wholeheartedly believe the most important investment that any of us can make is in ourselves. The number one investment you should always make is in yourself. Then number two, of course, is in your spouse and your children. you're choosing not to spend your money on other things so you can invest in yourself. And of course, it's a risk.

Yeah. And it's hard. Like I could put this in savings. We feel safer or I could take this and spend it on an experience that we hope makes us better. Which is a risk because there's also definitely a level of intentionality and skill that is required to make that experience actually valuable rather than just a vacation. And it could be a waste of money. Right.

And often was. We started businesses and spent tons of money and they were just flops. But we tried it. OK, we were willing to be unconventional and nonconformists. And that was important in our journey. Very, very important. were willing to question convention. Yeah, it's thinking outside of the box. Essentially, we were willing to be open to ideas that didn't fit into the norm of.

Rachel Denning (29:41.356)
Well, again, the social expectations or even our own expectations. We were willing to consider things that existed outside of what we personally knew or understood or believed. But along with that, think for sure is kind of this combination of being willing to face our fears. And I don't know how to word that as like a sacrifice, you know, but inevitably there are fears involved no matter what you try to do if it's different or.

you're pursuing something greater or higher there's going to be fear involved. In fact if there's not fear involved then it's not really greater. You're not pursuing greatness if no fear is involved. Like it's a natural part of the equation. And so I don't know. I don't know what that the sacrifice is there but maybe it's the sacrifice of comfort of remaining in the comfort zone. Yeah it's it's some form of

Well, I wrote this the other day. It's like, just because you don't face your fears doesn't make you any safer. Right, or any less fearless. But it feels safe. Yeah. The fears are still there. You're just choosing not to confront them or to avoid them so that you don't feel them. But they're still there. They haven't gone away. So it's being willing to engage in that process. But then the other thing, too, is

we, I guess, sacrificed our need to look successful at all times and to be willing to fail or to fall on our face or to make mistakes, which we did plenty of times and which is very painful. And people were like, ha, told you so, sucker. we had to face that. But we were willing to engage in that process because we knew that failure is fertilizer and failure helps to move you forward. And you only.

You only are a failure if you choose to give up and not keep trying. And so we had to be willing to do that and then to get up and keep trying after we failed. Yes, yes, yes. We could have played it safe. Yeah. And we could have followed the conventional path. And we could have looked like successes the entire way. Right. We could have just followed this along. And everyone's looked like, wow, you guys are doing it right. Everything's working out.

Rachel Denning (32:07.636)
wow you're just the little model family and and nothing goes wrong in your world and we're like forget that crap let's jump off this cliff and see if we splat. That's especially true because I think we did have initial success early on you got hired in a very prestigious position that was coveted by many other people. Very hard to get in. had great great hard to get in it had great benefits.

Like it kind of puts you at the top of this hierarchy of importance. That's how we started. We chose to give that up to pursue a more unconventional path. And then. That one was pivotal because they were like, if you walk out the door, you can't come back. There's no rehire. They tried to persuade me not to leave. Right. And they said, if you leave, the door closes behind you. But that, a similar thing happened at least three or four more times. There were at least two other positions you were offered that were.

over $100,000 a month base salary plus all the commissions and the benefits. I knew I would have crushed it. Right. Exactly. they handed out the bling bling with all the benefits, all the bonuses, all the stuff right there on the platter. And we could have very easily have accepted that position. And you would have been very successful at it. And again, here we are. We have the look of success. But somehow,

I don't know, just in our soul we knew that it would be soul sucking, that it wasn't pursuing what we actually wanted and what was really meaningful to us. And so we were willing to sacrifice that in order to pursue the meaning and purpose that we were after. And then that happened again with another job, then another position you had for a while you were very successful at. And same thing, they kept convincing you to stay and stay and stay and offering you more and more and more. And finally we were like,

This served a purpose for a while. was a part of our journey. But we know now we have to walk away from it. We have to leave because we can't reach the greater heights that we're after if we stay here. And so we had to walk away. And in each of those instances, we sacrificed security. absolutely we did. Yeah. In fact, in every one of those, there was money and benefits all right there. And we're like, no.

Rachel Denning (34:32.674)
We're gonna go for will choose to be broke like this vow of poverty Cuz we're like no, this is more where we want to go. It's insane Crazy and yet I don't know and that's where the challenge is because ultimately you have to be kind of in tune with the cliche following your heart thing because

that's really what has to guide you. Like that is the, that has to be the guiding force that leads you to reaching your full potential. And as long as you continue to ignore that, that's when you end up in these situations which are less than ideal, less than what you really want from your life. Yeah. And that's like you referenced this soul sucking part of it. You're just like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm checking all the boxes. I've got the nice things.

Really, my life sucks. It feels like a void. My life is empty. I don't like all the... Not Most of my life, I don't like. But I'm... But I'm successful. On paper, I'm successful. I've done all the things. Yeah. And so we're the opposite. We're like, we didn't do any of the things. Well, and on paper, we may not look successful. You know what I mean? Because what do we have to show or offer? You know, we're coming full circle now, of course.

we are building that side of it. But it's almost like we did it backwards. We lived life backwards. Which reminds me, years ago when we lived in India, we met this man, this couple that are super amazing. They've written a lot of books, the Ayers. And I remember him having this talk with you back then about how that's the way you should do life. You should live life backwards. You should live your retirement years.

while you're young, and then build your career and your wealth later when the children. are older. Yeah, as the kids are older. And we were already doing that. We'd already been pursuing that path. But that really resonated with us because we're like, yeah, that is the way it should be done. And so that's definitely kind of the phase we're moving into now is we're more purposefully growing our business and more purposefully growing our wealth because we sacrificed a lot of that early on.

Rachel Denning (36:59.65)
to build our family, which was what mattered the most to us. That's what we cared about, which now is why we have such a great marriage and such a great family, because we made those sacrifices early on. And we have genuine happiness and joy. We have inner peace. Sometimes I forget this because we're so used to it. It's like, this is just how it is, how we are.

And it's easy to forget that this is unbelievably rare. The love we have, the peace we have, the joy and happiness we have is so rare. The our marriage is extraordinary levels. Our kids. Seven amazing kids. We have an incredible relationship with each one of them. They have incredible relationships with each other.

And we have phenomenal health. mean, right there, that is true wealth. Right. We have it all in abundance. And we wake up. Just loving our lives like. I remember the last time I woke up sick to my stomach wishing I weren't awake. It was in like 2008. We lost everything. It was so bad. And yet.

What really brought us through that was we remembered like, wait a minute, we still have each other. We still have our health. We still have our faith. We still have our happiness and joy. We still have all the things that really matter. We were just broke at that time, really, really broke. And then we clod our way out of that and like, wait, we still have all this abundance. And we have it all. So like the sacrifices we made now seem so trivial compared to what we get to enjoy.

I think where people are going to struggle

Rachel Denning (39:02.198)
is that they want to, and we get to see it, you and I get to see it every day. We're working with people. They don't want to step away from. The known. Yep, you're right. What's known, what's familiar. They don't want to step away from what we call the herd, what everybody else is doing. like, they're doing all this stuff. I need to follow along. And as I'm coaching, I'm like, no, you don't.

If that's what you want, I'll help you do it well. But what you're telling me is that you don't want that. And yet they keep marching along. With the herd, when what they want is over there and and it's hard to step away from that, it's hard to. Well, like everything we've already mentioned. So I think I think if we break it down to a daily or a weekly thing, then then maybe there people will look at it and so that there's sacrifices, so to speak.

that we're making every day is like we. We get up in the morning and we go into our morning routines. So we're not checking our messages, we're not jumping on social media, we're not, you know, getting up, entertaining ourselves, we're not getting out of bed and going to the donut shop. I mean, so so some people look at our lives or we're running to school or work or like we're not doing that.

We get up and we make our mornings. They're slow mornings. They're beautiful, peaceful mornings. They're we intentional. We nourish our mind, body and spirit every morning. know some people would look at that and be like, it's so hard. Dennings, how do you not wake up and check social media first thing and then go for a donut? like, so I mean, maybe some people would still see that as a sacrifice, but.

I can't see it as a sacrifice because it's so much better. life is so much better without the trash. It's amazing. And so then then we do work that matters. Maybe that's a sacrifice and spend time as a family in the morning with yesterday we went running and walking at the cliffs and then working out in the gym together. I mean, we work out hard. We spend all day every day together.

Rachel Denning (41:28.31)
working, playing, eating, laughing, doing school, doing work, all day, every day. That's our life. And it's such a...

amazing, incredible, joyful way to live, especially when you like each other and you get along and you have fun together and, you know, there's no fighting, there's no arguing or disagreements or ugliness. It's just love and peace and joy. Now, and this is to not to paint some perfect picture because there's still frustrations and irritate, you know, our son's working on remodeling or fixing up a Defender.

There's irritation involved with that, right? Like there's frustration of this thing or this part is delayed or whatever. So there's still life and it's irritations, but I think the image that comes to my mind is kind of like there's the ocean and maybe the waves on top get ruffled, but below it there's still the depth of peace. That's underlying all of this, especially when it's connected to a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

part of our life is filled with meaning and purpose. There's nothing that we do. And sometimes I think people don't fully realize this. We've been so deliberate about intentionally orchestrating our lives. There's literally nothing, and I don't say that lightly, literally nothing we do that we haven't intentionally decided to do. And I would say boldly, there is nothing in our life that we don't want here. Right. There's nothing in our life that we don't want as a part of our life.

And that's including people and circumstances, whatever. Like anything's like, no, that's toxic. That's off. That's a no. It's out. Gone. Like we've been. And so maybe that's the sacrifice there of like, no, we, we put all kinds of things, anything in anything is on the chopping block. If it comes in and disturbs the dream life we're living. Right. Here's a couple of little things I think that we had to sacrifice. We had to sacrifice sarcasm. I was very sarcastic and very,

Rachel Denning (43:33.548)
You know, I love to tease and I realized that's that's not helpful. And we still do a lot of teasing, it's a it's bantering. We have some playful bantering. It's not sarcasm. It's not hurtful. So insulting, gone mockery, making fun of people where it like kind of hurts and everyone laughs, but it kind of hurts. Gone. My temper. I had a crazy temper. I was very angry that had to be sacrificed on the altar. like, that sucker is gone. I will not allow myself to be angry.

Rachel Denning (44:03.742)
and again, I'm just thinking through our family dynamics and like, no, like all these little things that I observe people doing there. Again, the arguing, the trying to be right, the, the teasing, the mockery, the fighting over stuff and things, just getting all worked up. We sacrificed all that. Like I'm, I'm not going to get worked up over little things.

And I know I know it sounds like a weird thing to bring up I'm like hey, what'd you have to sacrifice to live a great life? Well, one of the things I had to sacrifice to stop getting upset over little things That's super important. Yeah, cuz I was I was the kind of guy that was was constantly set over all kinds of little things if you get Said a little things then you're upset all the time I start telling myself like only little people get upset over little things. So I had to sacrifice being a little person I had to sacrifice

Again, we talked about the pride, the ego, the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the material focus. Okay, here's another thing we sacrifice. We sacrifice this desire to, we call it the peacock pageantry. We had to sacrifice performance and participation in the pageantry. I'm going along, I'm trying to get all the titles and positions and certificates and diplomas and all these little things.

All the little stickers that tell society how important I am. We just had to walk away from all of that and genuinely not care. And it still comes up. People were like, well, how how are you? where are your credentials? Are you qualified to talk about parenting? What are your qualifications? And I'm like, my results. Results are the only real qualification. Because results don't lie.

And so, you know, people who are still like, you can't participate in this little pageantry. I want nothing to do with it. And I can absolutely succeed without your little pageantry. So that was something we also had to sacrifice. Walk away from the pageantry. Check out. And do your own thing. So I guess I guess that's the overall message is well, but I have to emphasize this again, because back to the whole.

Rachel Denning (46:23.63)
point there is the reason why it's scary is because there is actually real danger. And you know we've we've told our kids that we've quote-unquote disadvantaged them because we've raised them in an unconventional way which means it will be that much harder for them to succeed meaning that if you step away from the traditional path the traditional path is there to be a safety net.

And it provides that role for many people. It's important. We're not discounting its importance. It is a safety net. But choosing to step away from it is where you, back to Alan's quote, you sacrifice greatly so you can achieve highly. But it requires more effort. It requires more work. More. More. It requires more. That is the risk. Because otherwise, if you walk away from it,

and give less, you actually end up worse off. There's no safety you would be otherwise. If you walk away from it and then you're like, you know, I'm just going to take it easy and we're just going to chill. going to kind do our own thing. There's no safety net. Yeah. If you fall, you splat. And that's serious stuff. So you're right. I guess it worked for us because I've always had this just determination that I will either find a way or I will make

Well, and so speaking more of sacrifices, that's another thing we had to sacrifice. We had to give up being victims. We had to take full responsibility for the outcomes in our lives. There was no more blaming the government or blaming the economy or blaming your past. XYZ did this to me or my partner or whatever. We just had to own the outcomes. And I feel like that's something we've actually been really good at. Like any time something

bad happens to us, we always just say, where did we fail? What did we do wrong? How did we contribute to this happening to us? Because we knew that ultimately that's what mattered most. In some way, we had contributed to it, and we needed to learn from that, so we didn't repeat it. We couldn't just say, we were just unlucky or bad luck, or this is just life. We said, no, we did something to make this happen, and so let's learn so it doesn't happen again. It's like,

Rachel Denning (48:50.51)
just 100 % ownership and responsibility for all of the outcomes we're achieving or not achieving. love that. You have to sacrifice your own victimism. so true. Love it. Well, that's, I'm sure we'll come up with more ideas as we go along and think about this, but I guess I want to really emphasize what we said earlier.

once you make the sacrifice on this side of it, making the sacrifice seems so big and so scary. Once you make it and you get the results you want and you look back, you're like, that was so worth it. It so worth it. And it doesn't even seem like a sacrifice because we've got so much more. I got the better end of the deal here. I'm like, I totally won. That was somebody don't keep that a secret. Wow, it's amazing. And it's worth it. I guess that's.

That's a resounding message we could shout that it's so worth it. But I do also want to say it is hard. It's going to be challenging because that's actually how you grow. If it was easy, it wouldn't require anything of you and you would remain the same. It's through the challenge and the hardship that you grow and become a bigger and better person. Which then changes the perspective because now you look back, you're like, that's not hard. It was only hard because I was soft.

And it's like looking at a child and, you know, like, yeah, for a two year old, it's hard, but when you grow up, it's no longer hard. It's now just easy. And so we keep growing. Like just because your body stopped growing when you reach your full height, like you keep growing, keep growing like crazy. Keep just get up every single day and say, how can I learn? How can I grow? How can I be better? And you become so much stronger. So then what used to be a sacrifice like that's easy, man. Yeah.

That was only because it was tough because I was weak. Right. And now you're a bigger person, more capable, more competent. And so it it does. You look back and see that was easy. And then then what's super cool is that on your day to day, week to week, you're pushing yourself, you're pushing your limits, you're achieving great things, you're living a great life. And it's not all that hard. It's really enjoyable. It's a great life.

Rachel Denning (51:12.802)
And we have a lot of people come stay with us and we have guests come and friends come and they come here at the World's Cool Family Resort. And I know what they even say, they'll come like, man, you guys, those are hard workouts. This is exhausting stuff, but it's enjoyable. It's fun. It's great. We're like, we're just loving life, every bit of it. And it's worth all of it. So if you know...

Ladies and gentlemen, that there's something you need to put on that altar and sacrifice the thing that's holding you back. And many people at least have the low hanging fruit. They're like, they know what's standing in the way. you know what the obstacle is, if you know it's holding you back, go ahead and sacrifice it. If you know what it is you want and it's standing in your way, go after it. Go get the thing you want most and live.

the life you were born to live and create the extraordinary family life you dream about. Make it happen and let us know how we can help. That's part of our life's work, which we love. We get a get up every day and help people create extraordinary family life. And it's the coaching we do, it's the courses we create, it's the programs we have, it's all there to help you create your extraordinary family life. So love you guys, thanks for listening. Reach upward.