School Of Awesome Sauce With Greg Denning

Are you living an expanding life? Or perhaps a shrinking one? Are you growing, improving, progressing, and really living? Are you moving at a pace that makes you feel alive? Or do you feel like you’re just existing, or merely coasting along? In every important area of your life do you feel expansion or contraction? Every one of us has the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to live an expanded life! What a privilege it is to feel the thrill and joy of learning new things!

I know this sounds crazy. I realize that it’s hard to believe. But I have seen it too many times to not notice the pattern. You and I can get trapped in trauma that we experienced in the past, and that trauma keeps us from succeeding joyfully in other very unrelated areas. I even experienced this myself. Traumatic experiences with people or places or things left a negative mark in my psyche, and that became a trap that prevented me from moving forward in other areas of my life. It shows up in finances and marriage, and parenting and in business. It’s a lot like having a terrible headache or a thorn in your side. Even while wonderful things are happening around you, you can enjoy them fully because you’re in pain. I’ve observed trauma can have the same affect. Learning to heal the trauma, let go of it, give it a new meaning, and let it empower you can totally transform your life experience and your outcomes! You can do this! You can break free from the trap of trauma!

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To ser

There are levels of thinking. Most people think at first level thinking. Second, third, and fourth level thinking is extremely rare. But in order to learn to think like a genius, we must discipline ourselves to practice next level thinking. First level thinking sees what is immediate and obvious. It only observes the immediate problem without consideration for potential consequences. It only observes the immediate opportunity without consideration for other potential opportunities. It thinks like everybody else is thinking. There are simple, but challenging principles and practices that you and I can put into our lives on a regular basis to discipline ourselves to higher levels of thinking. Make a specific time and place to think. Capture ideas. See beyond the obvious. Move from transactional to transformational thinking Create a massive amount of new experiences. Read voraciously across all genres. Ask better questions to yourself and to next level thinkers.

Every person I have ever met wants more freedom! We were born to be free. We were created for freedom. Freedom from guilt, pain, poor health, debt, addiction. We want money freedom and time freedom. We long to be free enough to live life on our terms! What kind of people enjoy the most freedom in this life? Those who consistently make good choices! In every area of your life the choices you make are either stacking in your favor or stacking against you. In a very real way you and I are choosing ourselves into freedom or choosing ourselves into a lack of freedom. I invite you to carefully examine all of the choices you are making on a regular basis and ask yourself if they are leading to freedom or to restriction. “The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.“ Discipline leads to freedom. Think about it. When I choose to avoid junk food and eat healthy food, I am creating healthy freedom in my life. When I choose to avoid junk media and fill my mind with great books and podca

The quality of your sleep is far more important than you probably realize! It can affect you physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. It affects your cognitive performance and the way you feel. It even affects the way you view yourself and your life. In this episode I share some simple proven principles and practices about the importance of Great sleep and how to massively improve sleep quality.

There are two ways to experience life. You can let it happen to you or you can make it happen for you. For most people, the only things that happen in their lives are the things that happened to them. They live like puppets, where other people and things manipulate the strings of their lives. I want to invite and challenge you to take full responsibility and ownership for everything in your life. Step into the extraordinary life of envisioning, designing, and creating the desired details of your life!

Do we have to have trials in life? Do challenges make us stronger? What if we could choose our challenges and trials? Is that even possible?! What if we told you that there is a way to avoid trials and embrace challenges that can totally transform your whole life experience and help you become the kind of hero you want to become without the kind of suffering you want to avoid? Listen to this episode today and share it with someone you know who needs to hear it

What do you do when life gets crazy? What will you do when life gets crazier? The answer is that we all fall back to our training! Archilochus said, “we do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” In the last week we went on a few extraordinary hikes in the Rocky Mountains. On Saturday we had the opportunity and privilege to help rescue a young man who was injured in a rockslide. We were only able to help him because we were prepared to help him. We were prepared because we have been training. The same is true for every important area of life!

Winning requires a different set of skills and a different mindset! Anyone can show up to play or to participate, but if you want to win you have to think and act differently. You have to be more strategic! And so we must ask ourselves in every important aspect of life, are we showing up to participate or to win? Because the world is becoming more competitive and more advanced, none of us can afford to merely participate in the things that matter most. We will get beat if we think we can just continue to play without having the drive and a strategy to win. Merely good workers will be let go. Merely good businesses will be outdone by the competition. Merely good marriages will grow cold and fall apart. Merely good parents will fail to keep their kids out of trouble. Merely good health habits will yield poor health results. Merely good education will leave you astoundingly ignorant. We live now in an incredible meritocracy. We will get exactly what we earn. Winning is your responsibility. Success is your du

Our society has become really good at using softeners, and at making others feel like they have to use them too, really guilt tripping the rest of us to use them so that we don’t make other people feel bad. Big problem! -we’re teaching and spreading victimism—that another person can make us feel something -that we should live in a world where nothing and no one makes us feel uncomfortable or threatened. That’s just not realistic and that philosophy makes us weak and unprepared for life. This is one of the reasons for the failure to launch and why many adults are not behaving as adults. -false idea that we should not feel pain, or conditioning to avoid pain at all costs. Softeners are tranquilizers; they are anesthetics that keep us from improving our lives. Pain can equal progress. In fact pain is the greatest motivator toward progress. But if we are consistently numbing ourselves we won’t change things we NEED to Change Are you fat? Obese? This is not body shaming! It’s body love. This whole life is abo

Are you progressing? Really progressing? We are made to move! We are created to create! When we are not moving, creating, progressing we feel empty and blah. And we feel that way if we are not moving at the right pace. We have to move, and at the right pace. It is in our spiritual DNA. We were made to move. We were created to create. Many of you are struggling only because your goals are impotent! So what are you going to do that is so big it will redefined this year?

Repetition is the unsexy secret to success! And it is one of the greatest ironies in life. We are so quick to say to ourselves that we’ve already done that before, we’ve already heard that before, we’ve already seen that before, and so we don’t need to do it again. Oh how wrong we are when we tell ourselves that story! The top performers in the world in every field practice repeating the key skill sets that make the biggest difference in their performance. From Music to movies, from science to sports, from families to finances, people who are world class repeat the skill Tens of thousands of times! What two or three things do you need to repeat tens of thousands of times in order to master the most important skills both personally and professionally?

We all have a relationship with ourselves. Sometimes we like ourselves and sometimes we don’t. There may even be parts of us that we like and parts that we don’t. But there is a simple formula to liking yourself more and for the rest of your life. We can all be more strategic about it. More intentional, more deliberate, more proactive.

Imagine losing your ability to speak. Many good people are going through life without discovering and cultivating their unique voice, the special message they want to share with the world. This could be your life purpose, your mission, or even your vacation. But whatever you do, don’t “ lead a life of quiet desperation and go to your grave with your song still in you.” Do the mental and physical work to discover and cultivate your purpose and voice. Bring it to life! “Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in men. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can only be fulfilled by him or her alone.“ “There is a detrimental influence of which so many patients complain today, namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives.“ Victor Frankl “This is the true joy in life, that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little cloud of ailments and grie

Most of us are just too stoppable. We stop at every obstacle, every inconvenience, every time we get uncomfortable, or every time we doubt ourselves. We make excuses, we justify, we rationalize, we tell ourselves stories about why we can’t start or why we can’t continue. But the truth is, you have the power within you already to be unstoppable! You can become unstoppable as a matter of principle and practice. This isn’t some heroic thing. This isn’t some grandiose gift from God reserved for very few. It is a simple way of being. You can choose right now to stop overthinking and over analyzing and just do it. Choose a few things that you know will make the biggest positive difference in your life and become unstoppable in those things! Exercising vigorously 4 to 5 times a week. Never consuming refined sugar again. Getting up early to start your day right. Connecting in a meaningful way every single day with your spouse and your children. Work when you’re working. Eliminate distraction when you need to foc

A very well-known couple with a seemingly good marriage recently announced their divorce publicly. It was a shock to a lot of people including me. But I get to do coaching for a couples every week and I know what’s often going on behind the scenes. The main reason good marriages fail is that most couples leave the quality of their marriage to chance, even though they don’t think they are. And that is the greatest danger! The longer you are married, the more deliberate, intentional, and strategic you have to be to create an extraordinary marriage!! What are you doing daily to invest in your marriage? What are you doing weekly to invest in your marriage? What are you doing monthly to invest in your marriage? What are you doing annually to invest in your marriage? Is your schedule and your calendar reflecting your strategies for creating and maintaining an extraordinary marriage? We see good marriage is failing and falling apart all the time. And most of it is preventable! That’s why we created how to crea

Today my teenage boys and I had the extraordinary opportunity to visit two different elderly women who are living on their own. What a privilege! We were so fortunate to sit and bask in their life stories, their unique lifelong perspectives, and absorb the wisdom from lives well lived. You and I have the opportunity to jump ahead to our own future in our minds and then to look back and carefully consider the lives we have lived. What will you be grateful you did? What will you be grateful you did not do? What will you regret doing? What will you regret not doing? Let’s be deliberate and intentional about the kind and quality of life we are living! We are not victims. We do not have to live life On auto pilot. We get to choose every day how we do life. So let’s do it in an extraordinary way!

Have you ever worked on some thing and noticed that the outcome is directly tied to your efforts? This is true in most things in life! We get out what we put in. This is what I called the effort effect. Our rewards and results are literally linked to our efforts. Many of you were only getting half results because you’re only putting in half effort. In what areas of your life are you putting in too little effort and then complaining about too few results? Level up today! Learn what you need to learn. Change what you need to change. Do what you need to do. Be what you need to be! Get the books. Buy the courses. Hire a coach. If you’re ready to level up and want some help do use the effort effect in your favor, go to www.gregdenning.com and sign up for high-performance coaching today.

We think of those who have died so that we can remember to live! We remember those who have lived heroic lives so that we are reminded to live heroic lives ourselves. Everyone of us has the opportunity and privilege to design, create, and live the life of our choice! We can live extraordinary lives if we will! It’s not that we can’t, it’s that we don’t. It’s valuable to ask ourselves on us questions. Is my life boring because I’m boring? Is my life unfulfilling because I’m not doing fulfilling things? Does my life lack meaning because I’m not doing meaningful things? Has my life lost the magic simply because I’m not bringing the magic? Live a heroic life! Throw off The limiting beliefs and stories that you can’t live in extraordinary life because you have a job, or because you have responsibilities, or because you have a family. It’s up to you! You can live a great life if you will. If you’d like some help to design, create, and live an absolutely extraordinary family life, Visit www.gregdenning.com and s