#77 From Rock Bottom to Extraordinary Family Life: The Power of Personal Transformation

Gentlemen, welcome to the formidable family man podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Denning.

Today's episode is recording it did a while back that was awesome and had tons of great stories and and principals, practices, strategies in here for a formidable family man.

So I wanted to share it with you today and and hope you'll get a lot of benefit from it.

I also wanted to remind you to to reach out, let me know how I can help.

How can I serve you If there's a specific strategy you need for something in fitness or family or finances, if there's some challenge you're facing, an obstacle you're facing, you don't know quite how to get through it.

I'm happy to make videos and and podcasts and just help you achieve the things that you want most, the things that matter most to you as a formidable family man.

So reach out, send me a message, let me know.

As always, enjoy this episode and be the man.

Thanks so much for joining me on this awesome journey together as we get to get to know each other and really get out and live life to a great level.

Like I'm going to share some amazing stories, unbelievable stories that still, if it hadn't happened to me, I'd be like, how did how did that happen?

This is unbelievable.

And my whole goal here, my whole desire is to share this incredible journey I've had and to inspire you to get out and live your great story, to instruct and challenge and invite and really just get some fire under us so we can out live life because the last thing we ever want to do just roll along merely existing.

Yeah.

I think the worst feeling in the world would be to get to the end of our lives and realized that we never truly lived, right?

To ask ourselves in in the in the pain of regret, right.

And Morris, like, why?

Why didn't I live?

Why didn't I step it up?

Why didn't I make it happen?

Right.

Like, why didn't I get into this?

Why did I just sit back and let life happen to me instead of letting, instead of getting in and making life happen?

And we get to choose the level of life we're going to live and how we're getting going to engage with it every day.

Literally every single day.

You and I have a choice.

And we can choose to live deliberately and meaningfully, or we can acquiesce and settle in for a mediocre existence and try to fit in and follow the norm and just be OK.

But I want to challenge all of us to commit to a, an extraordinary life of greatness to make things happen.

But let me, let me, let me jump in here.

We're going to we're going to tell times of stories.

I'll kind of introduce myself and get to know me.

My wife and I now have been at the time of this recording.

We've been married for 18 years and we have seven children, which this blows my own mind.

Like what in the world?

How, how do we end up with seven children?

And we have been travelling around the world for almost 12 years now.

We have taken our family and just travelled around this globe and been out and had the most extraordinary experiences.

And I'm going to share part of that journey and, and the people we've met and the things we've seen and experienced and, and things that have made us laugh and things that have made us cry and the life changing adventure that we've been on.

And, you know, I, I'll start out like from the beginning and even just a little funny thing, like the first, the first thing, the first significant event of my life was kind of funny.

When I was six months old, my mom put me in a local competition and I won the fattest baby competition.

I was huge and it was awesome.

I got a great picture of that with rolls all over the place.

And that's my friends.

When I knew I was destined for greatness, you know, and then, then we kind of grew up and my dad, my dad ended up taking off and my parents got a divorce around the time I was born.

And, and some, you know, step dads came and went and life at home was it was good.

I had a good childhood, but you know, it was a little bit rough.

And so I ended up on my own 16 years old.

And if you can imagine, those were challenging times.

It was, it was often desperate and afraid.

And to top it off, you guys, I was so shy and timid.

I really, and I was insecure.

I had all these insecurities about my hair being kind of red headed and all the, it wasn't cool back then.

Right now it's like it's cool to be a ginger, but back then it was a Carrot Top and it was, it was bad.

And I, I had some, I knocked out a tooth and so I had some missing tooth and fake teeth and, and that you guys have big Hobbit feet, huge Hobbit feet and people made fun of my toes and my feet.

And, and so I, I just was insecure.

I lacked confidence.

I lack people skills.

And so I'm out on my own.

I'm trying to survive, you know, and I end up, you know, at a low, low point.

It was Christmas Eve.

I'm sitting in this, in a bad part of town and in this shack of a house.

It was, it was ridiculous.

The, the thing was a joke.

It was, it was kind of, if I remember it right, it's kind of this old White House.

And it must have been built in the 30s or 40s.

I don't know.

It was small, but the floors were uneven, the windows uneven.

The, the place was a mess.

We had totally inadequate heat.

And we just were, I don't know.

It was ridiculous.

And so I was sitting there by myself on Christmas Eve.

I'm 16 years old, wrapped in a thin blanket, you know, watching my breath condense in the frigid air.

And I'm desperate and I'm depressed and I'm discouraged.

I'm angry.

I'm thinking about all the decisions people had made that kind of led me to this spot.

And I'm, I'm frustrated and I'm just hurting.

I just got a mad and, and you know, I'm like, literally the only, the only person I had to turn to was God.

So I spent some time reading scripture that night and praying and it ended up, you know, it was kind of this bittersweet.

It was one of the hardest nights of my life.

But it also was like, it turned out being like I just felt, felt God's love for me.

And it was, it was almost like this catalyst, right?

Because you guys, where there's pain, there's power and there was a lot of pain there.

And I remember thinking, this should not be happening.

I, I should not be here completely alone, no family, no friends like Christmas Eve, like this is ridiculous.

And I remember making commitments that night to myself like this.

This will not be a part of my future.

I'm going to do whatever I have to do.

I'm going to overcome my shyness.

I'm going to learn how to make friends, I'm going to learn how to build relationships.

I'm going to prepare right now so I can have an incredible marriage and I can become a great dad and I never have to experience this again.

And then I felt, you know, God's love and concern for me.

Realized like he, he cared.

He was aware of me and what I was going through.

Man, it just became this driving force.

And so I went after it.

My friends I went after, I got, I got voracious in reading and learning and paying attention.

I started observing.

I would observe the families and the people in the area where I was living.

There was a lot of crime and a lot of violence and a lot of domestic violence, a lot of broken relationships and broken lives.

And I felt so much sympathy and empathy for the people.

But I also realized, you know, I don't want to stay here.

I don't want to be in this place and I don't want to have this life experience, want to go upward and, and make the most of my life.

And so I had to come to these, these powerful realizations.

And I think we all do, right?

Every one of us has to come to this realization where we realize, oh, wait a minute, like my life will only get better when I get better, right?

I love that idea that my life will only get better when I get better, and that as I get better, everything else in my life gets better too.

It's like the tide.

When the tide comes in, it lifts all ships, it raises everything that's there.

And the same is true with our own personal growth and development.

And that's why I just, I just become so adamant about growing and learning and improving because I quickly realized that as I improve any part of my life or any part of myself, it automatically lifts everything else in my life.

Like, bring in the tide and you'll hear me refer to that more and more as we go along through this.

But you got to Bring the tide and literally started transforming my entire life.

And I started reading voraciously, just getting my hands on any book I could and interviewing people and asking people, observing successful people and observing unsuccessful people and literally taking notes and setting goals and making commitments and going after it because I realized I'm like, I got to make this happen.

And so you guys, I've been averaging about a book a week for over 20 years in personal development and human performance and the great biographies and autobiographies and great classics and yes, trying to make the most of myself.

And one of the biggest transformations along this way was leaving what I call victim Bill, where because I was living in this space where I was blaming everybody else, I was making excuses.

It was always someone else's issue, right?

And I was blaming the weather and blaming my location and blaming, you know, my parents, blaming my friends and family and blaming the government and blaming the boss, blaming work, blaming taxes.

We, we, it's so easy for us to blame and excuse away.

Whenever we blame, whenever we make excuses, we're taking our power and handing it over.

And it's my power to change.

It's my power to make a difference.

It's my power to transform something I don't like.

If I don't like that, why don't I change it?

If it's, if it's in my circle of influence and I can do something about it, then I should do something about it.

But when I make excuses and I blame, then I just take my, my privilege, my opportunity, my responsibility to change my life and I just give it to somebody else.

And it just, it just ruins everything.

And so I decided I was going to do hard things.

I was going to face my fears.

And that those were, those were tremendous fears.

It's like to, to talk to a girl.

I mean, I just remember being terrified of, of talking to a girl.

And I, I grew up my hair kind of a little bit longer and trying to cover my face.

And if anyone would talk to me or call on me in class or something, I remember turning bright red.

My face would get all hot and red and and, you know, to be in front of a crowd.

The the idea of being on a camera or microphone or or being in front of someone just terrified me.

But I was committed.

I was committed to doing hard things, to facing those fears, to facing my own weaknesses and working on them.

Right.

And realizing, like, OK, if if you know, like that, that quote, if it's to be, you know, it's up to me.

I'm gonna life will be exactly what I make of it.

And so essentially I drew a line in the sand there and said from here forward, my life will be exactly what I make of it.

And that's a moment of power.

In fact, you guys, I want to challenge and encourage all of you to do the same thing.

No matter what's happened to you, no matter what your past is, no matter what mistakes you've made, what weaknesses, what failings, no matter what has happened yesterday or years ago, if people were mean to you or things didn't work out like you hoped, draw a line in the sand.

Do it today.

I mean, you can do it right now and just say, you know what, from this moment forward, my life will be what I make of it.

And you guys, I did the same thing.

I had to do the same thing.

I had to draw a line of sand and make the most of my life.

And if I can go from where I was to where I am and to where I'm going, then anyone can do it and you can do it too.

And I hope we, we do this part of this journey.

And I hope you're not afraid to, to do hard things and embrace challenge and obstacles.

Sometimes we get afraid.

I remember I was running one time we lived in Costa Rica for a while and I was out running and you know, there's a lot of big mountains there.

And so we go out and run and there'd be flat, flat spaces and then mountains.

And I was running one time with my sister-in-law and we were coming up to hill and she was just like out of hill.

And I remember my mind.

I'm like sweet hill.

And, and we, we ended up talking about that and I realized, oh man, I had, I had transformed my mindset to embrace challenge and like it.

You know, in quotes, I don't, I don't know anybody like, likes challenge because the nature of challenges, it's crazy hard and it's uncomfortable.

But what I learned to do is I learned to like the results.

I learned to like the outcome and realize that doing hard things, having challenges and obstacles is what really turns on the growth.

Because when we're willing to get uncomfortable and push our own limits and challenge ourselves, then it's like, it's like personal growth on steroids.

But if we consistently seek comfort and entertainment and, and we avoid things that are uncomfortable for us, then we stay underdeveloped.

And perhaps all of us in certain areas of our life are underdeveloped because we're seeking comfort and we want to avoid, avoid anything that, you know, is really uncomfortable.

And but like CS Lewis said, hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

I'm going to repeat that.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

And that's where we're going.

Like, we got to just step it up and say, you know what, I'm in.

I'm all in.

I'm going after it.

I'm going to live an absolutely extraordinary life because I'm willing to put in the extra to make it extraordinary.

You guys, along this journey, I'm going to share so many of the the great truths and principles and lessons I've learned from the the great books and the great people.

I've worked and learned lessons from some of the poorest people in the world, from India to Guatemala to Morocco, and from some of extremely wealthy and successful people and some of the happiest people I've known and learned these great lessons.

I want to share this thought, the quote from Walt Whitman in this poem.

It's called me, O life, me O life, Of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish of myself, forever reproaching myself for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?

Of eyes that vainly crave the light of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renewed, Of the poor results of all of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest with the rest me intertwined, the question O me so sad recurring, What good amid these me, O life?

Answer that you are here, that life exists and identity that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse that fires me up and gets me so excited, you guys.

The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

You get to write your own little part of the story.

You get to do your own little thing.

And as you'll hear, you'll hear me say awesome is always an option.

It's always an option.

And that you know, we with that phrase came to me as a conversation with my young brother-in-law.

We were living up in Alaska and I'll tell you this, they maybe in the next episode here, the next two, we had had a horrible accident, a car accident with our family.

And it was it was winter time in Alaska.

My daughter was in a full body cast.

Everything was a frozen hell.

It was just it was dark and cold and miserable and the work I was doing, I just hate it.

And we were struggling and it was it was just this hard time.

But after the accident, we were so grateful just to be alive and it was a huge reality check and, and gave us a great perspective.

And we were sitting around the table one night and my little brother-in-law said, you know what?

Hey, awesome is always an option.

And we we live by that.

We live by that opportunity.

No matter what's happening, what we're facing, what's going on in every opportunity.

Awesome is an option, but we have to choose it.

And the other thing you always hear me say is reach upward.

That's just how I live my life.

I, I got, I, we, we have an apparel line, right?

It's like our superhero clothes that says reach upward and that comes from a poem.

And the last part of that poem is by Harry Kemp.

He says, chief of all thy wondrous works, supreme of all thy plan, thou has placed an upward reach into the heart of man.

And that is just so true.

Every one of us has this desire.

Doesn't matter where I've been in the world, all over the place with thousands and thousands of people, everyone I've met from from prisons and juvenile delinquent centers, where I've gone to teach and speak to, you know, the leprosy colonies, you know, it doesn't matter where I've been.

People have a desire in their hearts, in their souls to be their best, to try, to want to improve.

And that's, that's my mission.

That's my purpose.

That's what drives me.

That's my motivation is to help each of us reach for our full potential.

Because to me, in my mind, the greatest tragedy in the world is when a human being, you or me, fails to reach our full potential.

And that reaching is a journey.

It's a process.

I don't, I don't think it's ever a destination where we're, we're finally like, hey, we've arrived and there's nothing I can do to be better.

I think it's this beautiful journey we all join to reach for the best that's in us.

So that's why we're here.

That's where we're going.

Tell you these these experiences and these truths that have come in the most extraordinary ways.

So join me in this journey.

Get excited to excellence and to grow, to improvement, to being excited, to being alive.

O let's get out.

Let's make it happen.

Remember awesome.

There's always an option.

Reach uward.

See you next time.