What We Gave Up to Build an Extraordinary Family Life

We definitely walked away from comfort, convenience, ease. There's going to be fear involved. Most people are literally entertaining themselves to death. You have to be willing to sacrifice the opinions of other people. We have invested so much money Mhm. into growth. It's thinking outside of the box. The most important investment that any of us can make is in ourselves. Hey there, this is Greg Denny. We want to reach as many people as possible and help as many families as possible with these conversations. And we want to keep this podcast adree wherever. You can help us do that by subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcast or wherever you listen, your favorite platform and on YouTube. And leave a quick review and share your favorite episodes with friends and family. It makes a big difference. Thank you for being a part of this very important movement. 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. 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. And I guess here's one of the things that is so important. It's hard to consider it a sacrifice if what you get back is more than what you gave. 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? 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 then 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? Right. 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 at first was kind of like well 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. 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. But I do recall that on the other side of it, it did. It felt like a huge deal. It felt like the biggest impossibility ever. But I do know that for many people that's simply just this huge leap of faith. It's this huge unknown. That's a this is really big barrier. So difficult. Yeah. For me to completely eliminate all processed foods or whatever, you know, it just seems like so unreasonable. Let's start there. I that's probably not what people would expect. Like they ask, "Okay, Denny's, what did you sacrifice greatly to achieve highly?" And we start with, "Well, 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 absolutely fundamental 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 other the life that we want to live. 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. Yeah, we had to sacrifice that. We 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, right? That that's why it could be misinterpreted because it's not like we have an uncomfortable miserable life. We have a great life. A lot of people like their only their only pursuit 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 that they're just chasing that down. Like anything that can stop the pain and at the same time avoiding those things that would require additional effort. 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. We definitely walked away from comfort, convenience, ease, uh this idea of kind of keeping up with the Joneses, you know, doing what everyone else is doing. We we totally set aside for years the the nice house and the nice car and and those kind of things. 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 experiences 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. Again, cognitively you're like, well, we didn't sacrifice it. We have we have all these amazing things. It's great. But we did have sacrifice them when we didn't have. Yeah. Right. We had to choose like what are we going to do? Are we going to follow the traditional path? Are we gonna get a a nice, you know, set of furniture or are we gonna go out have an epic uncomfortable adventure? That was very important. We did go through a period of time where we literally got rid of pretty much everything. Yep. And that was for us a very necessary sacrifice. Super formative. So, okay. So, at one point, you know, becoming minimalists and then then really essentialists like keeping only what's essential. That was an very important right part of our journey. Sacrificing our security blanket of stuff, right? Sacrificing our connection and obsession with things. 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 perfect example, right? 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. So important. Um I I I think one thing that we did for sure for sure sacrificed was entertainment. We live in an age of entertainment and and we love entertainment. Like it's not like we're like that's lame. We love movies. We love entertainment. We love all the fun things that people love to do, but we realize 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 was grew up as an athlete. I thought, "No, I don't want to do that." And so Rachel and I committed we're not getting a TV and we were going to buy books as newlyweds. as newly was and we started our 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 just chitty chatting with whoever staring at the wall listening to music blah blah blah we sacrifice 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 going to listen to radio. I'm going to listen audiobooks. 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 going to watch a movie or study and learn about personal growth and development, that's 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. We 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." We were anxiously engaged in a good cause, right? And we were going after 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 genuinely chasing greatness and so we're sacrificing what is good for what is better. We sacrificed the good so quote the good opinions of others including family members or friends with well-meaning people like hey we're 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 blah go on and on and that started when we thought you know we're going to homeschool here comes and we're gonna do home birth what you guys are a bunch of weirdo hippies and and it comes all all down and everybody and all their things so you you sacrifice this avoidance of conflict, right? Because we so many people go along there just I just want to avoid conflict. If you want to build your life and your family, you have to be willing to sacrifice the opinions of other people. Yep. Like who cares what the neighbor thinks or the person in the church or this whatever or your mother-in-law 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, say, or do. We got to put this in context, though, cuz if you're if you're just genuinely being weird and you're doing something that's dumb and you are messing up your kids and you're messing up your kids and your life and people are trying to stop you, you should listen. We're not talking about that. But if you know you are genuinely chasing greatness and 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 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 where 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 cuz our life is so good, right? So here are some other things like we you know as you as you go along thinking about this like what are things we sacrificed looking back you can walk through and say oh there was quite there was quite a few things but some of them there were little things so I 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 sacrifice the ego sacrifice the when you know some I I meet people all the time, they're like, they just have this insatiable need to win arguments. It's 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 had to 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. Another sacrifice we made was um we have spent well over $100,000, probably approaching $200,000 in personal and professional development in books, courses, webinars, masterminds, coaching. Like we have invested so much money into growth and of course it pays off massively, right? But but it often was a big sacrifice. I mean, I remember a couple 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. And yeah, it paid off. It wor it worked out. We've also spent many, many tens of thousands of dollars on experiences for ourselves and our kids. 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. So you're you're choosing not to spend your money on other things so you can invest in yourself. We were willing to be unconventional and nonconformists and that was important in our journey. Very, very important. We were willing to guess 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 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. Inevitably, there are fears involved. No matter what you try to do, if if it's different or if you're pursuing something greater or higher, there's going to be fear involved. I 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. It feels 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." And we had to face that. But we were willing to engage in that process because we knew that failure is fertilizer and fa 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. 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 look like, "Wow, you guys are doing it right. Everything's working out. 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. It had great great hard to get in. It had great benefits. It like it kind of put 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. Um and then that one was pivotal because they were like if you walk out the door you can't come in. there's there's no like rehire. They tried to persuade me not to leave, right? And they said, "If you leave, the door closes behind you." But that was like a similar thing happened at least three or four or more times. There were at least two other positions you were offered that were over 100 $100,000 a month base salary plus all the commissions and the benefits, you know, which I knew I would have crushed it, right? and 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're like this served a purpose for a while. It 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. Yes. Yeah. In fact, in every one of those, there was money and benefits all right there. And we're like, "No, we're going to go for we'll choose to be broke." Like we chose like this vow of poverty. I know cuz we're like no this is more where we want to go. It's insane. It's crazy. 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 the soul sucking part of it. You're just like, "Okay, I'm I'm I'm checking all the boxes. Really, my life sucks. I it feels like a void. My life is empty. I I don't like all the fil most of my life I don't like but but I'm on paper I'm successful. I've done all the things. 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? I think where people are going to struggle 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. The Yep, you're right. What's what's known, what's familiar. They don't want to step away from what we call the herd, what everybody else is doing. It's like, well, they're they're doing all this stuff like I need to follow along. 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 stealthy that like there's sac 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. Uh we're not getting out of bed and going to the doughnut shop. I mean, so so some people look at our lives or Yeah. We're not running to school or work or like we're not doing that. We 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. Mhm. I 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?" So I I mean maybe some people would still see that as a sacrifice, but I can't see it as a sacrifice cuz it's so much better. Our 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. Y with yesterday we went running and walking at the cliffs and then working out in the gym together. I mean and we work out hard. We spend all day every day together. Yeah. Working, playing, eating, laughing, doing school, doing work all day, every day. That's our life. And it's such an 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 re 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 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 that's underlying all of this. Um especially when it's connected to a deep sense of meaning and purpose. Part of our life is filled with meaning and purpose. No, there's nothing that we do and sometimes I think people don't fully realize this. We have been so deliberate about intentionally orchestrating our lives. There's literally nothing, and I 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 and circumstances, whatever. Like anything's like, oh no, that that's toxic, that's off, that's annoy, it's out, gone. Yeah. 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 the dream life we're living right here's a couple little things I think that we had to sacrifice we had to sacrifice sarcasm I was very sarcastic and very you know I love to tease and I realized that's that's not helpful and we still do a lot of teasing but it's a it's bantering we 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 I had a crazy temper. I was very angry. That had to be sacrificed on the altar. I'm like, that sucker is gone. I will not allow myself to be angry. And I know I know it sounds like a weird thing to bring up. Like, hey, what' you have to sacrifice to live a great life? Um, well, one of the things I had to sacrifice is stop getting upset over little things. Mhm. That's super important. Yeah. cuz I was I was the kind of guy that well I was I was constantly upset over all kinds of little things and if you get upset of little things then you're upset all the time and I started telling myself like only little people get upset over little things. So I had to sacrifice being a little person. Okay, here's another thing we sacrificed. We sacrificed this desire to u we call it the peacock pageantry. We had to sacrifice performance and participation in the pageantry where 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 that and genuinely not care. And it still comes up. People are like, "Well, how how are you where are your credentials? How are you qualified to talk about parenting? What are your qualifications?" And I'm like, uh, my results, results are the only real qualification because results don't lie. And and so, you know, people who are still like, well, 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 I have to emphasize this again because back to the whole point there is the reason why it's scary is because there is actually real danger. Yep. 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 that 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 Allen's quote, you sacrifice greatly so you can achieve highly, but it requires more effort. It requires more work re 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 worse off. Yeah. There's no you would be otherwise. I guess it worked for us because I've always had this this determination that I will either find a way or I will make one. 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 XYZ did this to me or my partner, whatever. We just had to own the outcomes. And and I I feel like that's something we've actually been really good at. Like anytime 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. We 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, "Oh, we're 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 just 100% ownership and responsibility for all of the outcomes we're we're achieving or not achieving. I love that you have to sacrifice your own victimism. Mhm. So so true. Love it. I 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 was so worth it." And it doesn't even seem like a sacrifice because we've got so much I got the be better end of the deal here. Exactly. I'm like, I totally won. That was somebody don't, you know, keep that a secret. Just wow. It's amazing and and it's worth it. I guess that's that's a resounding message we could shout that it's so worth it. Right. But I 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 2-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 don't just cuz your body stopped growing when you when you reach, you know, your your full height. Like you keep growing. Keep growing like crazy. Mhm. 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, you know, it was tough because I was weak, right? And now you're the 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 then on your dayto-day, week to week, you're pushing yourself. You're pushing your limits. You're 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. And we we have a lot of people come stay with us and and we have guests come and friends come and and they come to here at the the World School family resort and I know well they even say they'll come like what man you guys that's those are hard workouts and this is exhausting stuff but it's it's enjoyable. It's it's fun. It's it's great. We're like we're just loving life every bit of it and it's worth it's worth all of us. 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 I many people at least have the lowhanging fruit. They're like they know what's standing in the way. If you know what the obstacle is, if you know what's holding you back, go ahead and sacrifice it. If 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 and let us know how we can help. That's that's part of our life's work which we love. Uh we get to get up every day and help people create extraordinary family lives. 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.

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