#288 Toujours Prét: How and Why to Be “Always Ready” (a Recap of the Portugal Training)

Greg & Rachel Denning (00:01.216)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your host, Greg and Rachel Denning. And we just wrapped up last night the first Toujours Prêts, which means always ready asset training that we hosted here at The World School Family Resort. We had an absolutely amazing, amazing event.

It was fantastic. So we wanted to give you guys a little bit of update on that and just kind of share the whole the whole idea. And of course, you guys like the we always need to be ready because you just never know what life is going to throw at you. And you know that already. That was the point. That was the theme of this event was talking about being always ready and what that means. Like, OK, being ready for what? Like, what are we trying to be ready for? You know?

And what is readiness look like? Yeah, exactly. And you I know you've told the story many times. Sometimes I feel like we repeat the same stories all the time, but it's so applicable. The principles that they teach and specifically the one you've told about preparing or doing that triathlon in Costa Rica many years ago, this was back in like 2007 and you had been doing triathlons before that.

And then you didn't think there were triathlons in Costa Rica. moved there. Long story short, you got invited to do one, but you hadn't really been training. You'd been working out like a normal sort of workout, know, average workout. Which I think is important. Yeah. It was normal. I was still working out. didn't look like I let myself go. Right. But a normal workout isn't sufficient training. Exactly. And that's the point of a training like this is we're talking about

what you're doing on a daily basis isn't sufficient training for whatever it is you're trying to prepare for. Because in this story you've told about your triathlon, you know, you'd been doing the normal workouts, but when you got to the triathlon, and it was what, like an extra triathlon? So was kind of a little bit more challenging. It was a hardcore extra triathlon. It was tough. mini triathlon. You did the swim.

Greg & Rachel Denning (02:18.742)
You did the bike, although your legs cramped up, you off the bike. It was, it turns out that was one of the hardest bike rides I've ever done. Ever. The thing was brutal. Right. And then, but then by the time you got to the run, you could not do the run. You could not finish the triathlon because your legs cramped up. You fell on your face. And then the famous line that you always say is, that came to your mind was when the time to perform has arrived, the time to prepare has passed. And

And that's the philosophy or the idea behind this Toujours Prét always ready. It's like, we don't know what's coming in life. We don't know if it'll be a triathlon or World War III or, know, like we just don't know what life is gonna throw at us. And we have to be ready. Like we have to be able to anticipate situations, scenarios, worst case outcomes.

and try to prepare for them. Now, you and I also know, you and I specifically, that you can't possibly predict everything that could ever happen. you know, there could still, you could prepare for everything in the world and then there still would be something happen that you never even thought of. But the beautiful thing about preparing yourself is that it actually helps you to become more resourceful, better at problem solving, know, you're become more of this MacGyver.

type guy where it doesn't matter what gets thrown at you, you can find an answer because you're used to finding answers. exactly what I was just thinking while you saying this. Like when you get really good at solving problems, then when they throw problems at you, you're like, I haven't seen this specific one, but I can figure it out. I'm highly trained at solving problems. if we're not highly trained, then what happens? We're relying on hope and hope is not a strategy.

Ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. So hoping that bad things don't happen to you or hoping that if they do, you're going to be able to handle it. Like that just doesn't work. Hoping your kids turn out, hoping your marriage stays great, hoping that nothing bad ever happens and hoping that I can do what I need to do when the time comes. we do not live at the level of our hopes. We live at the level of our habits. Or said another way, we don't rise.

Greg & Rachel Denning (04:41.08)
to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. And so wherever our training is, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially, that's the default. That's what we're going to go back to, especially in the challenging situations. Especially then, all we can do is go off of our training. our habits, our subconscious habits.

everything else kind of gets forced out of the way or melts away or whatever because you're in this, it's like your whole plan and strategy goes out the window when you get punched in the face. It's like boom, it's like everyone has the best laid plan until you get popped right in the face. Or like we did with the simulations that we ran, it's like everything is.

In your own head, you're like, no, I got this. This is amazing. And then you reach exhaustion or fear or whatever pressure or stressor gets added to your psychology. And then all the clarity you had under pressure often goes away.

Well, that was like, dang, I memorized this. knew the four things I was going to do. Now there's pressure. There it goes. Right. I'm done. And I think we'll talk more in a minute about what we specifically did in this training. But at the end, when we were discussing it with the group, a couple of them said things just like that. They're like, you guys talk to us. They're like, when you're doing first aid, remember these two things. And when you're doing your moves or your defenses, your combatives, self-defense.

Remember these things and they're like but after we were exhausted and tired and you'd been you know Because we do these simulations where you're messing with them. You're trying to you know, simulate a real situation We're adding pressure pressure and stressors exactly on purpose. They're like that then it was like I didn't know what to do Like what do do now and that's the point and this is what's cool. It's we know it's a fake patient You know, it's fake blood that's spurting everywhere and we know like she's screaming but

Greg & Rachel Denning (07:00.696)
It's an act. It's acting. But even under the simulation, the pretense, you're like, yeah, what do I do? It's still got to them. Even though it was fake, it still got to them. Their psychology is still messed with their head. And so that's what's so interesting about it is that even when it's fake, it still messes with you. And so how much more is that going to be the case in a real scenario? Yeah.

real when lives are on the line. And so the idea is to be an asset instead of a liability. And an asset is something that adds and brings value. Liability is something that takes away that requires more attention, more help. And so in a situation like this, in this context, we want to become assets where we're helpful to the people around us.

instead of being a liability to the people around us. And so I come to bring help instead of coming to need help. And obviously in life there's times we need to accept help and that's great. But for the most part, we shouldn't be a drain on other people. Yes, exactly. And if it's through negligence, shame on me if I should have been prepared but I wasn't because I was negligent. So I just.

I've had this philosophy for a long time and we finally just turned it into a training and it was, it was seriously awesome. We loved it. It was so fun, but I want to look at my life physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and financially and say, how can I be an asset? How can I train? How can I be ready? How can I be available for something happens to me, to my wife, to my children, to our friends, to our community? And then in a larger context,

to anyone within my circle of influence wherever we happen to be in the world. I was actually thinking through this yesterday. At any given moment, you know, you're surrounded by thousands of people within, let's say within a mile or half mile radius, whether you're traveling or you're at the grocery store where you usually shop or your church built, like wherever. At any given moment, you're surrounded by hundreds or thousands of people.

Greg & Rachel Denning (09:25.82)
And here's what I was thinking about. I'm like, the likelihood of something happening to you is quite small, but the likelihood of something happening to thousands of people that are within, you know, half mile or mile of you, it's way higher. The probability is way higher. There's going to be an accident, a threat, a problem, whatever, anything that can happen in life, because the one guarantee is something's going to happen. Things will happen, people. And so the more ready

the better off we are. And the way to prepare for that is to, I guess this is one of the conversations I had, I thought it was so important with one of the guys here at the group is when a situation arises, you do not want that to be the very first time you've thought about it. Let that sink in. Somebody walks up and sucker punches you and you're like.

Man I have never thought through this situation or you see a car accident in front of you or Somebody falls off a ladder Somebody cuts themselves open. Yeah like which happened. Okay. Well, okay So this is what I was the thoughts going through my head is that in a lot of ways I do feel that this is these skills or something that radiate out they begin of course with you

the individual who gains the skills and then they just expand to your family and then the people around you. they even start on the inside of you. absolutely. The mental, emotional state and then they go to the outside, the physical. Because when you have mental and emotional strength, you are an asset. you don't need, Greg Denning doesn't need me to take care of you mentally and emotionally because you're strong. You are capable. don't, like, of course I'm there to support you when you need it, but for the most part, I'm not the one.

propping you up and helping you make it through the day. You know what I mean? Like you're an asset, you're a strength. And as each of us can develop that ability, then we don't need other people to hold us up and help us make it through because we're capable, we're competent. Now of course, again, that's not to discount the fact that sometimes, yeah, all of us need that help in some way. But for the most part, it should be Exactly, it should be limited, not...

Greg & Rachel Denning (11:52.568)
the normal state of being. So, and then as you gain the skills, and for me, I thought about this in the context of when you and I began traveling as a family, which was many years ago, think now 18 or 19 years ago, and we had young children, I realized at that time how important it was for us to gain the skills to be able to take care of our own family mentally, emotionally, physically.

And particularly in when it came to like health and wellness and healthcare. Because we were traveling, we would often be on the road, we would be in foreign countries. And we couldn't, we didn't just have the luxury of just going to say our childcare or I don't even know the terms, pediatrician. I don't even know the terms of these things. We can just go to our regular pediatrician and be like, Because we didn't have one. Yeah, here's my child that you've known since birth.

and you know now they have a cut or they have this cold or whatever help take care of it. I had to gain that skill like not that I'm a doctor or anything like that but I had to become the pediatrician you know what mean like symbolically and you like we had to be the our child's pediatricians because we didn't have that resource available to us all the time. We often lived in very remote places where those kind of things weren't even available right and so we're like hey we let's

Let's think through this. Let's make sure we're ready for whatever little or sometimes big things happen. Right. And so I know for a lot of people, that's often been a barrier. In fact, that's maybe one of the more common questions we get is, well, what do you do about health care? And our solution was, well, we just gain the skills. You are an EMT. You have the medical emergency training. You have the wilderness emergency medicine training. You legit could stitch someone up or, I mean, you know.

put on a tourniquet, like you can do all sorts of things that makes you an asset that we don't have to rely on. Of course there are situations where we still do, but you know what mean? For the most part, that first care comes from you because you have that training and that capability with sicknesses, illnesses, coughs, colds, all of those things like you and I were the first line of care for this. We never go right to a doctor because we've

Greg & Rachel Denning (14:16.568)
trained ourselves enough to have enough skills and enough knowledge and then beyond that we have lots of friends who are doctors and lots of friends who have medical training so we can reach out to them if we don't know what to do. And so we've literally have this little community of competence that eliminates the need for us to rush to the doctor.

right away because we're like, I know what this is and I know how to diagnose it and how to treat it. And you know, couple of weeks ago I got strep. It was confirmed by our friend who's a doctor. You have all the first aid and medicine. And so you had the antibiotics. You gave me the antibiotics. I got better. We moved on our way. I never had to go see a doctor because we were able to self-treat because of the quote unquote asset training we've given ourselves to be able to

have this sort of competence, right? So that's one example. And then of course, no. Immediately I'm like, wait a minute, we're not saying you should go self-treat yourself if you don't know what you're doing. You should be taking it in. You need to learn stuff. So you learn as much as you possibly can across the broad spectrum. And then you surround yourself with friends, they're talking about. that are even more competent.

But that's a deliberate thing. And that was one of things we talked about here is like part of your greatest assets are building the community, building relationships, friendships. Well, so then brings me to the story that happened on this event. We did all kinds of crazy stuff. We won't even tell you all of it because it can be taken out of context. And you need to come experience it yourself. And plus, we don't want to give away all the secrets so that when we do the next one, you know all the stuff. But one of the things that we did was break glass bottles.

That's all I'm going to say about it. Intentionally break glass bottles. And one of the participants in the process did something, did something that wasn't recommended with this bottle and sliced open the wook. What would you call this part of your hand? Like right behind his forefinger in between his forefinger and his thumb. Yep. Sliced it open. Like it was long. It was deep, but we didn't have to go see a doctor because we had

Greg & Rachel Denning (16:39.72)
doctors here and they literally we went inside they took care of it they cleaned it they treated it they it's a type of suture but that I had a medical kit that you had in your kit it's like a medical zip tie or something they're awesome close it up completely handled by the people on site very quickly

Very calmly. It was fun. was all the other participants got to see and watch and learn. Right. Because they've been learning about. This is so cool that you guys aren't freaking out, loading him in the car and running to the hospital. Well, and they just had spent the week learning about first aid. They had gone through a simulation where we had a patient who was acting and it was our daughter, Kaia. She was acting and she had wounds and she was bleeding.

and they had experienced that stress, but they were able to see you, the doctors, and then, I mean, I feel like I played a role, me, and then another friend. Well, I did. I was there, and I was calm, and I was helping him breathe, because he's young, he's 13, and he was a little bit. pale, and got nauseated. It painful, and he was, yeah, he was a little bit worried about it. we. That's actually important, learning how to handle something mentally and emotionally. Exactly. And everyone to.

observe that and feel the energy that's being radiated. The calmness that was being brought of like it's okay everything because you right away you looked at it you saw it and you're like it's okay because I was looking at his face and mentally I saw like he was checking out and I was like hey look at me I want your eyes on me because he was looking his hand like I'm like no we're not passing out here look at me slow deep breath we're good we're gonna go inside and take care of this yeah and then we just calmly went in we were there

You know, me and our friend Alex were helping him just be calm and breathe because they didn't they I think they had lidocaine, but they didn't use it. I don't know. So, you know, there was no. Yeah, he just had to tough it out being taken care of. But it was this whole community of people. then everyone at the event was sitting there watching because this was now here's first hand first aid. Right. This happened on our Cuba trip, Yeah. We were down there and we were using knives and.

Greg & Rachel Denning (18:56.842)
one of the guys we were working with, firefighter, cut his hand wide open with his knife. And so we, same thing, it was dark and it was at night and there was no electricity in Cuba at all at this time. So we got all our batteries, our flashlights and solar and everything out and did the whole suture kit there. And so again, what I'm saying is like, these are real scenarios where you're out trying to do good or you're out traveling, something happened, you're like, how do we handle this? Yeah. And back to the idea of, well,

not just being able to travel, just living life in general. I feel so much more confidence and so much more, I guess, less worry and stress knowing that you, specifically you, have these skills. I mean, I have some skills, you know? That that just gives us more freedom to be able to live life in the way

that we want to. More freedom and less fear. Yeah, more freedom and less fear. Yes. And so we're able to travel, we're able to go abroad, because like I said before, one of the biggest questions we get from people about, how can you go travel? Because what about medicine? What about doctors? What about? And all the what if questions we always have. And it's like, when you have these types of skills, you just.

you have that freedom because you're not worried about those types of things because you know when it happens you'll be able to handle it. And that's just one aspect of it. Absolutely. small aspect. It could be, what if you end up in the wrong part of town? what happens if you're in a threatening situation? you're downtown exploring and wow now there's a riot. There was a protest that turned into a riot. What do you do? Exactly. Or you get lost. What do you do if there's a natural disaster?

What do you do? How do you handle yourself for situations that happen whether you're traveling or not? Sometimes we think, well, I'm not going to travel because things could happen. Wait a minute. Let's check that thinking there. Does that mean that if I stay home and I don't go out and travel that nothing will happen in my area? And of course, you're like, well, no. That's not true. Life happens. will happen no matter what. Yeah, traveling or stay home.

Greg & Rachel Denning (21:16.738)
try to stay home and put pads around your house and hope that nothing ever happens but hope is not a strategy. Yeah I mean any of these things we've mentioned could very well have happened and they do your own neighbor they do have at your own house and and there's there's crime happening in your neighborhoods and crime that you don't know about and crime that you do know about and there's there's human there's sexual abuse happening in your neighborhood I guarantee it there's human trafficking happening

If not in your neighborhood exactly, in your communities, in your cities, in your states. It's all over the place. Which was another thing that we talked about during this training. So whether it's direct malice or some kind of accident, things happen. Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen to you or could happen to you, so be ready. Actually, my own personal mindset, I wholeheartedly believe now things are going to be good.

I'm getting this so I can help others. This is how I operate. This is how I mentally operate. think it's important to share that. I'm not operating in fear. I'm operating as a philanthropist. I want training so I can help people. And because of that, we have been able to help so many people. Well, specifically you. Yeah, OK. You don't have to include me, babe, but it's OK.

Rachel stays in the car with the kids, so that's helpful. That is helpful, actually. And I run over and help. I don't even think I can count the many of... I can count the number of times you have been able to help people, specifically medically with first aid, in multiple countries around the world. And often, austere, remote environments where there isn't immediate help.

It's a doozy. And sometimes just random scenarios. Like we lived in Costa Rica and there was a guy who fell off his bike and he ended up dying, unfortunately. But you came across him and you helped him. There was a guy in Mexico who'd fallen off his motorcycle and cracked his head open. He ended up living. We're the first ones there. You were there to help get him in the ambulance when they arrived and everything. You know, like there's just been so many scenarios. And I think in some ways, you know, that's

Greg & Rachel Denning (23:42.188)
God in the universe conspiring of like, hey, here's a useful person. I'm going to put him in the path of these things. Maybe a little side note here that might be helpful for people. I remember speaking to God about this years ago and just saying, hey, look, I'm willing. I want to help and I'm willing to help. And so as you're leading our lives, if if there are people out there who need help, lead us, lead us there in the right moment.

And it started happening more. And I do feel that God and his universe will conspire in your favor and in other people's favors so that you can be an angel and you can be a help. You can be an asset. Right. The last thing I ever want to be is a liability that I I'm you know I'm the one that because of my own neglect or lack of preparation I need somebody else to rescue me. Somebody else to help me because.

I wasn't prepared when I should have been. So basically that's the whole idea of this. And we went through some medical training of course, and then some really fun learned combatives and self-defense. Lots of combatives and I think everyone really enjoyed that. It's so fun. But they enjoyed it but it was also legitimately challenging.

And that's also a part of the training because for the most part, and I include myself in this, we spend our lives being comfortable and doing what's convenient. And so it's very useful for people to be challenged in a way and to use their bodies in ways that they're not used to using them so that they have some preparation for

you know, whatever might come their way. Because, well, your physical fitness is a factor. Absolutely. Cannot, I'm going to do a double negative here, it can't not be a factor, right? And even when we push our limits on a regular basis, it's different when you get together with a group. And when you have someone else pushing their limits. Exactly. You're with a group and then you have somebody saying, nope.

Greg & Rachel Denning (26:07.082)
move faster, go farther, push harder. You blow past limits that you thought you were pushing up against. And it's awesome. And you feel this massive sense of accomplishment. Once it's over. Once it's over. And in the moment, you learn a lot about yourself. And you're exposed to where your limitations are and what you can work on. And you're also exposed to, this happens all the time, is like you realize

didn't think I was capable of doing that and I just did it. That's powerful. That's crazy powerful and special. And so we got to see that. We got to see people face their fears of going over the edge of something. You know, to rappel down or other ways to get out. That's kind of the other element here. We're like, hey, if you ever get in a sticky situation, you have to get out. How are you going to get out? How are you going to escape? How are you going to get away? How are you going to defend yourself?

and having this bag of tools at your disposal for defending yourself, defending others, escaping, finding solutions, avoiding problems, which is the most important skill, using your head, which is your most important asset, and use your own creativity and thinking, and keeping your cool, and medical skills if you need it. It's just, this is awesome.

It's so fun and it's a great way to live. And so like for all of you, mean, we're just deep in this all week long, all day long. It was amazing. But now it's worth sharing to all of you. So every one of you listening, I sincerely want to invite you to adopt that kind of identity and mindset. Become an asset. Be helpful. Be useful.

And if I could rant a little bit, the desire to be a good person and the desire to be helpful.

Greg & Rachel Denning (28:14.754)
doesn't necessarily make you helpful. If I want to help, but I have no skills to back it up, then my desire to help isn't, I'm still useless. Yeah, it's empty, it's pointless. Yeah, so in that moment where this person needs specific help and I'm like, look, I really want to help you. And I'm like, I'm there like holding their hand or whatever, I'm watching from a distance wanting to help.

Well, okay, that's good. At least you want to help. Your heart's in the right place. But you're missing the skills. So let's say you see some lady being robbed and you're like, man, I really want to help her. That's the right thing to do and I want to help. But you sit there and watch because you're like, what am I going to do? I got nothing. Right? You have, you literally have no idea what to do and you don't have the skills to do it.

So you don't want to go over there and become a liability and be another casualty. You walk over and they rob you too. You're like, well, that wasn't helpful. So I guess I want to drive this home. it's harsh to say, but just wanting to be useful doesn't make you useful. In certain many situations, you're still useless, even though you want to be. So the rant there and driving home the message is, want it, first of all, and then back it up.

back it up with some training that makes you truly useful. Not just, I want to be helpful, I want to be kind, I want to be loving. Right? Well, and what that looks like is just, you know, like you and I love to say, there's never a graduation from education. You just have to take on that lifelong learning mentality. And that's a part of it for both of us. You know, we...

We'll read books about it. We'll study. We'll take classes. We'll take courses. We'll watch YouTube videos. We'll, you we'll intend. You took an EMT training. We'll intentionally do things that help us gain those skills, even though they cost money. You know, you've spent thousands going to different trainings, wilderness medical trainings. and and thousands. But that's how you gain the skills. Like you don't get it just by sitting at home and thinking about it, hoping.

Greg & Rachel Denning (30:31.862)
I think that's important too. There were times when we couldn't afford it. Yeah. And we went and then looking back after I was in some cases, literally able to save other people's lives. Like, okay, was that worth the 750 bucks I spent when things were tight all day long? Right. And when you get in the moment,

And you think, what would I be willing to pay to be prepared? When you're in it, you'd give anything. You'd drain your bank account and put it on a credit card in the moment you need it. So those of you listening, think through that. If you're in a situation and it's you or someone you love, someone you care about, an opportunity where you really could help, and you can't, just imagine this scenario.

You can't because you were being cheap. horrible, horrible feeling. And I never wanted to be in that spot. And so I'm so grateful we did what we've done to pay for the training. And I'm going to keep going because I crazy love these trainings. I got some other ones in my on my horizon that are coming. I'm very excited about there's a couple in Poland I'm going over to that are super, super advanced. And we're going to keep doing them here.

Because we had such a great turnout and so much fun. We had a very, very positive response. It was a very successful event. Totally packed and then some. Yeah, we were packed to the limit. And it's definitely something people want us to continue. And we had a lot of people. Yes, a lot of you said, hey, can you do different dates? We couldn't make the first round. Because we're doing levels. And this was level one, essentially. And so level two will be more advanced, of course.

But we have people that want us to repeat level one because they couldn't make it. And of course, all the people that came, most of them want to continue with level two. So we realize that this is now going to be a part of our future. Yeah. Which is exciting and fun, especially because why I love it that our family loves it so much. Like everyone that was here, all of our children were here except one. He's in Spain right now.

Greg & Rachel Denning (32:54.968)
And they all... FOMO. absolutely. He wanted to He wishes he could be here because he loves this stuff. So it is really something we all love doing. And so that's always a sign to me. It's something we should do more of. Do more of what you love. And we love it. You know, even including Kaia, because she's a fantastic actress or medical emergency victims. She's a great one. Yeah, she loved it. And made an amazing

highlight reel of the entire experience. Which was awesome. Yeah. I gotta point out too that you guys know how we feel about food. So the food that Rachel prepared was delicious and nutritious and everybody was just raving about every meal which is so important to us that people come experience with their own mouth that you can eat healthy food that tastes

absolutely amazing. When you sit down and be like, this is incredible. You're like, yeah, and it's good for you. We don't have to violate our principles. We don't have to poison our bodies to have delicious, nutritious food. And so that's, that's part of like seeing our whole family culture and all of our family dynamics, but also like sit down and eat with us and see how we eat. And that this is doable and delicious. And it's the whole thing. It's the whole

family experience because life is holistic. It's the whole life thing. So anyways, you guys super crazy excited. It was so fun. We had repeats friends come back that have been on many trips with us. And then we had a bunch of brand new people that have never been on our trips or retreats or events, everything they rolling and had an incredible time. And I know they'll be back. So good, good things rolling down. Yeah. So yeah, beyond the lookout, I'm going to

sending out an email soon probably with our potential events and trips for 2025 which are stacking up we are going to the base camp of Everest for sure next I am going to host a retreat for men maybe three or four of them in 2025 because it has to happen we've got to get together live in person and

Greg & Rachel Denning (35:20.568)
create you know bond in this brotherhood and train to be the caliber of we need to be. Yeah because some of the men who have been here not just for this retreat but for our family study abroad they have mentioned that that that's a key role is a key ingredient is being able to be here in this type of brotherhood and just being together and working out together and talking and discussing and sharing. It's powerful. Yeah it's very powerful.

So we're going to be doing that for sure. We're going to do, I'm sure next year we'll do asset one again and asset two. We are doing VIP couples experience. That's going to be incredible. Massive VIP couples experience. Very, very limited. That is for people who want to be the iconic power couple.

couple. Yep, extraordinary marriage and leading your families, the whole shebang, that's happening very soon. We got we got a lot going on. We're just so, Rachel and I are just so driven to give you guys the tools that we use every day to create our extraordinary family life. Well and it was fun because doing this event, specifically the combatives,

It just gave me an idea relating to couples because you did you and the other instructor Aaron did so much of the practicing of the different moves like you have to Train your body to respond in certain ways so that you it almost just becomes habitual of like when this happens This is what I do right whether it's this move or this elbow or it has to become automated It becomes automated and automatic and I thought about that just one morning. I woke up and I thought

This is what we need to teach couples. And this is something we're going to be doing in this VIP couples experience is we just want to teach you the automated responses you should be having to your spouse. Like when this happens, this is how I respond. When this happens, this is how I respond. So it becomes automatic. Well, here's the interesting thing. You already have an automatic You do, but.

Greg & Rachel Denning (37:35.596)
But it's not been deliberate the wrong one. Exactly. And that's why you don't have all the results you want. And so we're like, I'm like, it's just the same thing. We literally just need to do that kind of training of like, do this action when this thing happens and watch what happens. It's going to, because changing your behavior changes the results you get. And when you change those results, like everything in your marriage changes. I mean, it's really so simple in so many ways.

That it's almost... yet it feels so elusive, but I'm like, well, yeah, if we just present it this way of though this is some sort of combative practice training, like, hey, this is what you do in this scenario. And then you do that thing, you're like, that was amazing. It worked. I can't believe it. You know, my wife's happy, my husband's house, you know, everything's so much better in a relationship because I'm able to do train myself to have these automated behaviors and automated responses to certain situations.

That for us has made all the difference in our marriage. And it's something we've literally done. We've trained ourselves to respond in certain ways to certain scenarios within our marriage that completely changes the dynamics and makes it extraordinary instead of just, you know, bleh. Or where it's dying, falling apart. Right. So I'm super excited about that because I think that will be very impactful. Yeah. Tons of great...

stuff coming this year and well actually in the next well now I mean things are rolling out we're sharing all the goodness so I also am playing with a Norway trip in the summer is that Jaws? Jaws shark are we gonna go shark diving? is the tune that came out let's do it no that that would be awesome so you guys we just want to share

Share some love. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of our community. Thanks for being awesome human beings So those some of you listening were here this week and we're so glad you were here. I love you guys Some of you listening have been all over the place with us and done cool things and some of you listening Maybe brand new and will be and will be exactly. We're gonna you out here The the invitation today is just kind of examine your life and say, you know

Greg & Rachel Denning (40:00.258)
How can I be more prepared? How can I be a better asset? How can I continue my whole life education? Not just intellectual education, as important as that is, but your whole life education. How can you keep making things better and keep creating those transformations? And the whole purpose, the whole reason is so that you can be happier, more joyful, have more meaning.

more fulfillment, you can squeeze the juice out of life and really truly enjoy it instead of just merely existing. Well, that's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up because back before when I was talking about having freedom versus fear, that is one of the end results actually is that you're happier when you have less fear and stress and worry in your life. Well, then almost automatically you just have more happiness and joy and peace because

It's like all the energy in your life that was going towards that stress and fear and worry is now freed up and it can go in a better direction, a higher direction. And so you're right. Gaining competence, becoming an asset, it does help you to have more happiness in your life because you have more competence and confidence and capability, which frees you up to feel more positive emotions. Boom.

Love it. I'm just gonna throw this out there. Some of you need to sign up for coaching with Rachel. Some of you need to sign up with coaching with me, for coaching with me. And maybe some of you men need to join the the formidable family man brotherhood and tribe. And just grab the tools, grab the tools that speak to you, the resources. And I'm not just making this sales pitch. I'm like we're adding real value and you...

creating tools and resources that you need in your life so that you can have the life that you want. Not the life that we want for you or somebody else wants for you. It's for you. So stop hesitating and go all in. I came away with so much this week. It was exhausting. I can't tell you.

Greg & Rachel Denning (42:26.296)
specifics but I was exhausted yesterday because I had an interaction well I guess I can tell you we did a self-defense training where I was padded up and I had 28 people I had a combatives I had just those 28 so basically I did a kind of an MMA

session yesterday with 28 rounds. I'm so tired and so sore. My whole body but absolutely worth it and I come away with so much and I learn and I improve I see my own weaknesses and I make new commitments to keep working keep improving keep training. Yeah same for me. And it's worth every effort. So remember we don't live at the level of our hopes we live at the level of our habits. So let's go those habits dialed in let's get the training dialed in.

so we can live the quality of life we want to live. Love you guys. Reach upward.