School Of Awesome Sauce With Greg Denning

Almost every single choice we make will lead to freedom or limit freedom. Each of us has the potential freedom to lead life on our own unique terms. But many of us make choices that drastically limit our freedoms. This is true in every aspect of life. From health and fitness to finances. From education to contribution. The danger is that many of us are making choices every day unconsciously. We are literally unaware of choices that we are making that are limiting our freedoms. This episode can be a wake up call for all of us to be more keenly aware of how our choices are leading to or limiting our freedom.

There’s nothing quite like an international adventure to be a pattern interrupter, a wake up call, and a reality check. It’s when we are exposed to new and different things, and to wonderful people that we remember to think, act, and live differently and better. My wife Rachel and I recently led a couples trip to Thailand over Valentine’s Day and had some absolutely amazing adventures and experiences. Here are a few of the life-changing lessons we learned and how they can dramatically influence your life too.

What will you do with the broken fragments of your life? Each of us experiences many things in life that feel broken and irreparable. That gives us a choice. We can amass a pile of rubbish or erect a pillar of beauty! You and I literally have the power to choose what we will do with the broken pieces of our lives! We can use them to complain and bemoan our lives and even fall into self-loathing, or we can pick them up and build a beautiful, legacy mosaic! Whether it’s mistakes you’ve made with yourself, failed attempts in business, neglecting your spouse, or mistreating your children, you can pick up the broken pieces and create something wonderful and beautiful! You can build an EXTRAORDINARY Family Life with the broken pieces of your life!

It’s TOTALLY possible, though still surprisingly rare, to live in real joy day by day. The kind of joy that permeates your being and radiates through you and from you; that feeling—no, more than a feeling—that flows through your mind, heart, spirit, and body and becomes your way of being; that light, that warmth, that glow, that radiance that FILLS you and spills over on those around you! But if it’s so available, why are so many good people living below their privilege and potential and only experiencing true joy occasionally? Mostly because it’s being crowded out of their lives by other distractions, by conflicting emotions and unmanaged thoughts. Learn how to live IN joy and have joy live in you today.

Those four D words represent the sources of so much heartache and disappointment and failure. And we are all plagued by them at some point in our lives. How many dreams have been wasted, how many hopes abandoned, how many achievements lost because we have doubted, become discouraged, gotten distracted, or were disobedience to the laws of success? There are proven ways to overcome these dreadful D’s. They also begin with the letter D. Determination, discipline, dedication, devotion, diligence! Making these principles and practice as a part of our lives will literally crush out the four dreadful D’s.

Most people are unaware that they are unaware. I was! But awareness is the first ingredient in the recipe of success and happiness! We absolutely must become perfectly aware of the connection between our thoughts, feelings, choices, actions, and habits. Those things create our circumstances! Yet most people are absolutely unaware of that fact. Awareness will bring greater power and potential into your life and give you back total control of yourself and your outcomes!

Very few people accurately do the math to figure out what their choices and actions are costing them. In fact, most people are completely unaware that every thought, every word, every choice, every action, and every habit has a cost. Everything has an exchange rate! I invite you to carefully and thoroughly examine the cost of everything in your life. Is what you have and do bringing you the value you want? Or is it costing you more than it’s worth? Calculating this equation can be painful, but it is so worth it! Don’t wait until it’s too late. Calculate the cost.

The risk is real! We are all at risk of living in unfulfilling, disconnected, and unexciting life. That is unacceptable for high performers! But if we are not deliberate and intentional about setting up systems, practices, and habits that eliminate the risk, then we are destined to live on for filling and unexciting lives. Most of us are drowning in a sea of distraction that leads to a swamp of disappointment. We can change all of that by setting up simple sequences that lead to predictable results. The results we really want!

How does one measure progress, status, growth, improvement, standing, high-performance, wisdom, greatness, and true success? How do I see past my Blind spot’s, my erroneous perceptions of myself, my mistaken conclusions? With so many opinions out there how can I know which ones are accurate in order to measure my own standards of success in my own life? There is most definitely a wrong way to do things! There are people who say otherwise, but they are not educated enough in the lessons of history. So how do we know what the right ways are?

As a human being you have the incomparable privilege of pursuing your potential! Sadly many of us go along through life unaware of the privilege and so we merely exist in survival mode and ultimately fall far short of where we could have arrived. Thoreau said “most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them.” Not only is it a blessing and privilege and opportunity, but it’s also a responsibility and a moral obligation. Think of what you could achieve. Think of the lives you could influence. Think of who you could become if you vigorously embraced the pursuit of the privilege of your potential! Your very best self is inside of you! It is not external to you. And it is your privilege to manifest it, to create it, to make it happen! None of us wants to get to the end of our lives, or even to the end of this year, and realize that we had lived far below our potential!

Many of us are being attacked by pirates and hijackers on a daily basis! They are subtle and cunning. They rob us of our focus in our freedom and our potential. We end up living in perpetual self sabotage and slavery because of pirates that masquerade as food, entertainment and efficiency. The most dangerous hijackers are little indulgences. “The foolish man thinks that little faults, little indulgences, little sins, or of no consequence; he persuades himself that so long as he does not commit flagrant immoralities he is virtuous, and even Holy; but he is there by deprived of virtue and holiness, in the world knows him accordingly; it does not reference, adore, and love him; it passes him by; he is reckoned of no account; his influence is destroyed. The efforts of such a man to make the world virtuous, his exhortations to his fellow men to abandon their great vices, or empty of substance in barren of fruitage. The insignificance which he attaches to his small vices permeates his whole character and is the

Many people sit around hoping their marriage will get better, wishing things will change. But transforming your marriage will happen by choice, not by chance! You have far more power to improve your marriage than you think you do. One person can create a tremendous amount of positive change in marriage. Take full ownership and responsibility. Don’t focus on what your spouse needs to do differently, focus on what you can do better. Invest in your marriage! It is worth whatever it costs. Think about it will cost you if you do not invest in it. Go on a date every week, and overnight or every quarter, and a big trip every year. Join us on our couples trip to Thailand over Valentine’s Day. www.WorldschoolAcademy.com Get our course about creating an extraordinary marriage at Courses.extraordinaryfamilylife.com

I love giving gifts and doing things for the people I love most of my life! I’m sure you do too. We spend a lot of time and effort thinking about gifts that we can give and about ways we can serve the people we love. But we often miss the very thing that would be the best thing that we could do for the people we cherish and appreciate the most. Hands down, the best thing you can do for those you love... is to make the most of yourself! For all of us, that means really changing, truly improving and significantly growing. It means new knowledge, new skills, new habits. For some of us it means putting an end to an addiction or a poor behavior. For others it means getting in great shape and taking better care of ourselves. For some it means letting go of the past. For others it means NO MORE angry explosions. It means being happy, genuinely happy. It means being present, fully present. Do it because of love! Because you love them give them the best gift possible by making the most of yourself.

Is fear holding you back? Do you find yourself burdened or even consumed by fear, worry, doubt? It’s easy to slip into a dark negative space we were constantly afraid of what might happen or what others might think. We get afraid about the future, our health, our family, or the world. But most of our fears are irrational and only serve as a self-made prison. I challenge you to face your fears! Just by staring them down more than half of them will slither away into the shadows. And the other half you can face because of who you’re becoming and what you’re chasing down!

We often say that our family is the most important thing in our lives, but we don’t always show it. The reality is that we prove our priorities with our actions. I want to invite and challenge all of us to put our families first with our words, our attitudes, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, our reactions, and our habits. Are you putting your family first? What will you do this month, this year, and this decade to put your family first? How will they know without a doubt that they are the most important thing in your life?

Have you ever used ‘I don’t know’ as a way to escape answering a tough question? If you have, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common answers to challenging questions. But more often than not it’s just an escape. It’s a story we tell ourselves, and sometimes it’s even a lie. Most of the time we do know, but we just don’t want to know. We use ‘I don’t know’ when we’re afraid, apathetic, or mentally lazy. It’s our responsibility to know! If we genuinely don’t know, then we have to find out. If we do know then we have to take ownership.

I blew it. 10 years ago I wrote down in my journal the thing I knew I needed to do. But I didn’t do it. I had good reasons a.k.a. excuses. I told myself stories to justify and to rationalize why I couldn’t get it done. But the reality was I just didn’t do what I needed to do. When I finally got after it and did what I knew I needed to do, the results came right away! I wish I would’ve done them sooner. Wishing won’t change anything, but action will! And now I’m getting it done! Maybe you have done something similar. You knew you needed to do some things but you haven’t done them yet. It starts today! It starts right now. Do not procrastinate another moment. Get crystal clear about what you want to achieve and what you MUST do in order to get what you want.

Your body is your vehicle for life. Therefore much of the quality and outcome of your life will be determined by the condition of your vehicle. The more you care for your body the more you will get out of life! It’s totally possible in the next 12 months to get in the best health of your life and to stay there! And it’s far simpler than you think it is. But first you have to understand a few misconceptions and the main reasons why most people fail to get in the best health of their life and to stay there. If you want to be around for your kids and their kids and even their kids, make some changes today and stick to them for the rest of your long healthy life!

We all need to have certain people our life, especially if we want to live an extraordinary family life! There are 7 people that we ideally want to have in our lives. 1. A friend 2. A partner 3. A dependent 4. Someone to serve 5. A cheerleader 6. A mentor 7. A coach

Gratitude is one of the most motivating forces in the world! When we are deeply grateful we take action. When we have gratitude for our bodies we take care of them better. When we have gratitude for our spouses we cherish them more. When we are grateful for our children we give them time and attention. When we are thankful for our jobs we work harder. Gratitude really is the great motivator! Let’s be giddy with gratitude! Appreciation is the highest form of energy and depreciation is the lowest form. Let gratitude radiate in you, from you and through you! Every day write down a few things you’re grateful for and write a quick note of gratitude to someone you were thankful for. You can’t be hateful when you’re grateful!