Living an Extraordinary Life with Greg Denning

Greg Denning shares his journey from a broken and impoverished background to living an extraordinary life. He emphasizes the importance of mindset, heartset, and skillset in transforming one's life. Greg also highlights the significance of community and how it played a crucial role in his personal growth. He encourages men to raise their standards, take responsibility for their lives, and continuously improve themselves. Greg shares his experience of breaking down walls of loneliness and learning to connect and love others. In this conversation, Greg Denning discusses the importance of healing from past wounds and developing a heart set that allows for love and connection. He emphasizes the power of journaling to understand triggers and transform beliefs. Greg also shares his personal experiences with overcoming challenges and how they have shaped his mindset and skillset. He highlights the significance of reading and continuous personal development in becoming a better man. Greg offers various resources, including his podcast, app, masterclass, and coaching, to support men in their journey of self-improvement.

Takeaways

• Mindset, heartset, and skillset are essential for transforming one's life and achieving extraordinary success.
• Building a community of like-minded individuals is crucial for personal growth and support.
• Raising personal standards and taking responsibility are key to living an extraordinary life.
• Breaking down walls of loneliness requires vulnerability and a willingness to connect and love others.
• Continuous self-improvement and increasing one's capacity to love are important for building meaningful relationships. Healing from past wounds is essential for personal growth and the ability to form healthy relationships.
• Developing a heart set of love, kindness, and forgiveness allows for deeper connections with others.
• Journaling is a powerful tool for understanding triggers, transforming beliefs, and processing emotions.
• Challenges and hardships can be opportunities for growth and learning.
• Continuous personal development, including reading and skill development, is crucial for becoming a better man.

Greg is an Executive Life and Business coach for entrepreneurs and businessmen with families, the creator of the Be The Man Masterclass & Tribe, and The Extraordinary Family Life Formula. He is the host of Be The Man &The Extraordinary Family Life Podcast.

He can be found on social media on IG at @greg.denning

More information can be found at Gregdenning.com

Transcript

Alex Lange (00:00)
Welcome back to A Man's Journey podcast. I'm really excited today to have our speaker. I've collaborated with him on a project before on fatherhood. I love everything he's about. Greg Denning. Greg is a speaker. He's an executive life and business coach for entrepreneurs and businessmen with families. He's the creator of Be The Man Masterclass and Tribe and the extraordinary family life formula.

He is the host of Be the Man podcast, the extraordinary Family Life podcast. He's everywhere. I consume a lot of his content. I love it. But the most important thing, and what I love about him is him and his wife, Rachel, have seven children and they've been traveling around the globe with their family for the last 12 years. They're passionate about family, relationships, business, education, adventure. And when I say education, I just love the way that they prioritize education and the way they go about it. But...

But lastly, before I turn it over to you, Greg, is you inspire and train ordinary families to live extraordinary lives. And I know later in the podcast, we'll break down what does that really mean? Because I wholeheartedly believe that all men, all families can have that. It just requires a level of responsibility and intentionality to get there. How are you doing today, brother? Fantastic, man. I'm grateful to be here to talk about this stuff and grateful for what you're doing, man.

Greg Denning
Appreciate that. I want to, before we dive in everything, can you just bio introduction, tell us a little about yourself, where you're from, where your life's gone, your whole life story. Yeah, absolutely. So the short version is we live in a genuinely extraordinary marriage. Last week, Rachel and I celebrated 23 years of genuinely blissful marriage. And I say that sincerely, we have a phenomenal marriage.

23 years, which I got married when I was 23. So on our anniversary over the weekend, I was like, man, I've spent half of my life with this amazing woman. And it's just been awesome. We've just done so many epic adventures. I think we just hit somewhere around 60 countries with our family. And this is extensive travel, deep, deep travel, not the tourism, not, you know, checking boxes like we're going full immersion to see the world and its people.

we live in Europe now. we have, we have houses and investments around the world. get to work with, with wonderful men and families across five continents. we've already been in nine countries this year, just doing like bucket list stuff. I just took my two boys for their last kind of big adventure. And just kind of a man trip before they launch as adults to start their own lives. And we just went into Iceland and we were there all last week and, you know,

took the family to Morocco and drove all over Morocco. And again, we're all in place because that's our unique dream. Now some people don't travel doesn't mean they don't care about travel or whatever, but I share that because it's our unique family dream. As a family, we love travel. We love adventures. We love seeing the beautiful world that God's created and meeting amazing people. So we're living our dream. But I grew up in an absolutely broke and broken family.

parents divorced when I was really young, step -dads came and went to the tune of six. We were on welfare. I was shy and insecure and broke and desperate and depressed. And then I had no hope. Are you kidding me? All I could think about was like, how am I going to get my next meal? It never even occurred to me that one day I'd visit Europe or India or Peru or Iceland, right? It just didn't even show up on the radar. And so,

I had nothing. I wasn't handed anything except difficulty, which is probably one of the greatest blessings ever. And because I was desperate, brother, man, I was hungry for knowledge. And I had to find out like, what are the secrets to being genuinely happy and successful? So I started chasing that stuff and I found it and I implemented it. And we have this amazing life we're living. And it's evidence of what you were saying earlier, right? Anybody can do it.

If I can do it, anyone can do it. It's literally just following the formula and the formula works when you work the formula.

Alex Lange
I just want to say first off before it gets lost, congratulations on the 23 years. I mean, most, most people don't make it there, right? Divorce rates are 50%. So 23 years of an extraordinary marriage. I just want to say congratulations first. Secondly, I, what I love about all of this is that the life that you're living now, you would have never thought.

that you had this difficulty, this hardship, things that have come up in your life. And I think that's what makes you the epitome of turning your pain into your power, really sitting with the suck, understanding it, allowing it a space, and then pushing forward, pushing through, and using that to be your power in the world, your gift in the world. it resonates a lot with me because I grew up in a broken home myself, right? My mom was a drug addict. My dad was a functional alcoholic.

single father to four, medicated on Prozac, you could imagine, right? Like it was stressful, it was tough. There's a lot of men out there, a lot of men that we emulate how our fathers show up in our life, for that most masculine relationship. So before we dive into your story of now, take me back to when you were 16, take me back to that time, and can you go through that, speak through it a little bit, as we...

push forward.

Greg Denning
Yeah. And man, thanks. Thanks for asking those questions and walking through that because there was, it would have been so easy. Well, and I did, I, I, I used my circumstances and I used what other people had done as an excuse. Man, I played the victim. I was, I was the mayor of victimville. I blamed everybody, everything. But at some point, for some reason, I think it was 17, 18. I was like, wait a minute. Why, why am I still using?

them as an excuse. Why, why am I still giving power today to things that happened years ago? That's retarded. And I had this big aha moments, like nothing will get better in my life until I get better. And, and conversely, everything will get better as I get better. Like I'm, I'm the equation here. Like I'm the catalyst. Like if I changed and everything changes, but the more I play the victim, the more I try to.

around my pain. So I can use pain as an excuse or as a reason. And if I try to drown it like the people around me man, I was in I was in a bad part of the town right and it was just constant use of drugs and alcohol and crime and violence. I was surrounded by it and and I give credit to God but as a teen I was just looking around like man I don't want any of this. I do not want to say here if it's possible live an awesome life I'm out.

Like I'm, I am not going to acquiesce. I'm not settling for this. I'm not staying here. And I realized instead of facing their pain or using the pain as power, they were drowning the pain. They're avoiding the pain. They were doing anything except address the issue. And so I just started reading anything I could get my hands on, man. old books have find no, no cover, like whatever. I'm like, I'm just going to devour this. I started finding people.

I would just notice like, okay, that guy seems happy or seems wealthy or seems successful. I'm going to start asking questions. How'd they do that? And this was before, before YouTube or any of that stuff where now you can look up and find all this amazing stuff and podcasts, all that back then. And I was like, that guy looks, I'm just going to go ask him. And I started, or just a while. I was super shy and timid. So I just started watching and I started reading and I didn't have any friends and any family. So I'm like, I'm just read these books. And they started mentoring me and.

And it was getting into the books and that reinforced the idea of like, Hey, wait a minute, something better is possible. And, and if it is, if it, if that's the case, if something better is possible, then by at least, you know, my perspective, we have a moral obligation to reach upward. We have to rise because otherwise I'm just settling good. Good is not good enough when extraordinary is possible.

Alex Lange
you said something there that I don't think a lot of men realize, but if we create this curiosity mindset, then things can start to fall in our place, right? We have to create this space. I know we've talked about it many times before, but not many men create this space to create a connection with themselves, to understand, like you said, that pain, we use porn, we use alcohol, we use drugs, we use, for me, it was work, right? We use...

cell phones were, you know, we're, we're screen happy and something that came up for me is like, as you started to read, as you started to educate, as you started to create this space for self development, personal development, what started to change in your life?

Greg Denning
My, my thinking and my feelings immediately. Well, not, no, not immediately. It, it took some work because I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have a coach. That's one of the reasons I coach. This is why, why I lead people because.

we can literally collapse what took me decades into days. And I know that seems like an exaggeration, but I can take all this and I give you the tools and leverage and like, dude, you can move this decades into days and months into moments. We were just like, that's how you do it. And once I figured that out, I was taking a long road. Once I figured it out, then it was immediate. And so I started to change my thinking. And the first, the first thing was like, stop, stop blaming. Like,

Now, the way I teach this, like whenever we blame, we're taking this inherent power we have and we're just setting it down over there. And dude, nobody's going to pick it up for you. Nobody cares about your dreams. Nobody's going to pick up your power and do stuff for you. You wouldn't want them to anyways. Right. So you just take your power set down. So pick back up your power. And like you were just saying a moment ago, learn how to get comfortable with yourself and face your own issues.

And if you've got the demons, just face the demons, like get inside your head, get inside your heart and face that stuff. Don't avoid it. Don't buffer from it. Don't, I mean, you're going to cry. You're going to scream. You're going to be, you're going to feel every emotion out there. I had a raging temper and deep insecurities and I made a lot of mistakes and to face all that was painful. And it's like, like the vomiting, right?

And you'd rather not, but man, you got to get that stuff out. And so really leaning into it and saying like, who am I going to be? Who am I not going to be? How am I going to live? How am I not going to live? How am I getting in my own way? Like that one's key brother. Like how am I my own enemy instead of being my own hero in my life's journey? How often are we men being?

Our own enemies, man. We're, we're the villains in our own story. And you got to face that. You got to look in the mirror and face that like a man face, face the, the abyss, the, the demons, the monsters that are there and slay those suckers and just get them out of your life. And when you start to do that, it starts to change your mindset. It starts to change your heart set. And then it starts to change your skillset.

Doing those three things will totally transform your life.

Alex Lange
I wrote this down on the paper. I'm not even kidding. Transformed through leveling up through mindset, heart set, skill set. That's where you just finished. Dive more into that for me because you say this often and I resonate with it a lot. There's this framework called conscious leadership group and they talk about we can be the creator of our life or we can be a victim.

And like you talk about the victim, we're blaming, we're giving our power away, we're outwardly focused, but we can be the creator of our life through responsibility. And so many times, you know, I've said this to men and they're like, well, I'm responsible. You know, I go to work, I provide for my family, they have food on the table, the roof over their head, clothes on their back. They're taken care of. I'm responsible.

But I think this responsibility, I believe this responsibility we're talking about is a responsibility to self.  So you transform through leveling up of mindset, heart set, skillset, dive more into that.

Greg Denning
Yeah, you're absolutely right, brother. And kudos to all you men listening who are working hard and you're trying to be good men and providing, you're trying to be good husbands and fathers. That's fantastic. What I found in my own journey, brother, is I had to raise my own standards way high.

I had, I had to raise my standards above what anyone else expected of me, right? Not, not that I get excessive or fanatic or crazy, but I'm like, well, no, if I, if I maintain really high standards, it's hard at first because it's uncomfortable and it requires this effort and change. But then once you're there, it's actually easier. Life is way easier and better when you have your own high standards, not from your church, not from.

You know, some mentor, not from your parents, not from some, anybody else. These have to be your own. They have to be personalized and you set those super high standards that changes everything. Right. So I started walking through that because in life you get what you tolerate. So the mindset is like, I got to change what I think, what I believe. If I kept saying, well, this is just the way things are. I think how powerless that is. This is just the way things are, or this is just the way I am. That's even a better one.

It's just the way I am. I was born that way. People kept telling me like, you know, you have a temper, you have a redheaded temper. And I believed it. As though, as though your emotions have anything at all to do with your hair color. It was so absurd, but I just believed it. I'm like, I have a redhead temper. So again, it's victimism, right? And I have a temper or I'm shy. Even these I am statements. I am this way. I've always been this way. My parents have always been poor. I'll always be poor. I can't change. It's just the way I am. That's bogus. It's just a lie. So you start with your mind. You're like, no, no, no.

My life is exactly what I make of it. Adopt that mindset. Everybody listening, just adopt that mindset. Just take an adopter right there. I'm sending it out. Like my life will be exactly what I make it. And then I adopted another one. It's ancient, ancient quote. And I put, I had it in my office for years. It's in my philosophy journal here. It says, I will either find a way or I will make one.

I mean, just adopt that belief starts right here. I will either find a way or I will make one. Well, then what does that do to your heart set? Man, I don't know the answers right now. I don't know how to get this done, but I'm committed to doing it. So that's where confidence comes from. You actually gain a lot of confidence, not by knowing all the answers, but saying, I can figure it out. I'm either going to find a way or I'm going to make a way. Like I'm getting this done. So then, then your heart starts change. You start to have more love.

You started to have more empathy and compassion. You started to have more certainty, more confidence. Well then, and then the skillset piece, right, is you actually have to back it up with competence. And you realize that everything in life, brother, comes down to skills, everything. We think, you know, and we, we, we rely on hope. A lot of men rely on hope. Like hope this works out. I hope my kids turn out great. I hope my marriage works. Like hope is not a strategy, man. Not a strategy at all. You got to have a skillset, a very, very specific skillset.

to have a great marriage. You can be a great dude, you can be a great investor, a great businessman, you can be a great dad, but in order to be a great husband, it is a very specific skillset. And that's where I like, I'm a good guy, why isn't this working? It's like, cause you suck at being married. That's why it's not working. Or you know, you might have a great marriage and great in business and you really are a great dude, but your kids don't listen to you. It's because you haven't developed that specific skillset.

And anytime there's any problem in your life. So my big focus is fitness in mind, body and spirit, family, that's marriage, fatherhood and family legacy, and then finances. So fitness, family finances and finance, increasing your income, increasing your investments, managing your expenses, any one of those areas, right? If you have a problem in any one of those nine areas, it's because you've bumped up against the limits of your current skillset. And so if you just,

I wrote this down the other day. I do, I write every morning, I'm just capturing ideas. And I wrote this down the other day. The number one habit. This is so powerful, so profound. The number one habit for a genuinely successful life, massive success is to non -negotiably improve your own personal value every single day. Like make yourself more valuable. So for me, that's no exceptions, non -negotiable. Every single day I do something that.

increases my value, like my knowledge, my skills, my abilities, my, my love, my connection, my influence. Every single day I make myself better. And it makes you unstoppable man. Because you're expanding in mindset, heart set and skillset.

Alex Lange
There's so much there. I want to first say something you took me back to a time I was in the Navy. My Master Chief at the time, I had said, I hope to do this or something like that. And he looks at me and he says, hope is not a course of action. Just bringing that on the putting the light on hope makes me makes me like that that hits that resonates because I think we we always hope and that's that it's that unconscious giving our power away. Right. And so like bringing it back and saying, hey, hope is not a course of action.

What can you control? Focus on what you can control, not what you can't control. so that's number one. Number two, I want to dive into something and I know it correlates to your life now, but as a 16, 17, 18 year old man, young man that, that has gone through all of this, this, challenge and heartache. Where did community fall in line with you? How did that support you in your journey? I know that now it's a big part of your journey. Can you dive into the importance of community and how, how it played an aspect?

Greg Denning
Brother, it's so unbelievably important to me now because I did not have it then. At that time, I had no friends and no family. And I was so timid and so shy and so insecure. I hated myself. I thought poorly of myself. I talked poorly about myself and to myself. My self -talk was terrible. And people emphasize that. I remember I walked onto the football field one day.

I was missing some teeth because of an accident and I couldn't get dental care. I had acne really bad and pop marks. I grew up my hair kind of long to kind of cover my face because I, you know, I was insecure, shy. I walked out there and my coach, who's supposed to be an example of manliness, who's supposed to be an example of love and support and supposed to be a mentor and a leader, he just walks up to me and he's like, man, you are one

ugly person.

and then he's walked off.

I was like, and at the time I was like, yeah, tell me something I don't know. Right. Cause that's, I was just as in low spot and here, here's this grown man supposed to be leading youth and helping them. He was just, he was just, you know, adding, adding fuel to the fire. And so it was creating those problems. So I had, I had no community. I had no friends and I was super shy. So I wanted it desperately. I, the, of all the things I suffered brother,

loneliness was the worst.

And I don't know how to emphasize that enough of all the pains, all the suffering, all the things were just terrible. The loneliness was the worst when you have no community. It's just unbearable. And so that drove me again, where there's pain, there's power. That was my obstacle. And you know, the obstacle is the way that was my obstacle. I had to develop social skills. So I got ahold of the book. Somebody gave it to me actually, cause they knew I needed it.

it's called how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. And I read that thing again and again and again and again and again, and along with all these other great books. And I'm like, I'm just going to practice. I'm going to practice talking to people. I'm just talking at first. It was just greeting people, just saying hi and smiling, which was super hard for me. And then it was asking people questions. I remember I would get sick to my stomach at the idea of like sitting next to somebody like on a drive or a bus or something for 30 minutes. Cause I was terrified. I'm like,

what in the world could anyone possibly talk about for 30 minutes? Like I've got nothing. And I would get physically ill. Right? So, you know, you jump ahead. No, back in that pain point, I remember specifically writing down, like, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I have a phenomenal marriage. And if we're blessed with children, then I'm going to be a world -class dad. I'm going to be an absolute world -class dad. My kids will never experience anything like I'm experiencing alone.

And I'm going to have a community with my wife and with God. Right. So actually first it was with God. Cause even, even that, you know, Christmas Eve, I was 16 years old, just about turned 17. I was, I was sitting there by myself, no family, no friends. It was horrible. Pulled bar town. Didn't have enough heating. He's sitting there watching my breath and, and God was all I had. Man, I just prayed. And that night I remember just feeling a lot of love from heaven. And so I had, I had community with him and that was it.

That was all I had time. And then I started working on my social skills and started meeting friends and going through navigating that whole process of who you can trust and learning like how much trust you give. And, and I had built up a wall and I think this will be helpful for somebody who's listening. I had been hurt and betrayed by people in horrible ways. And so in order to quote, protect myself,

I built up walls around my heart. I thought this will protect me. I'm not letting anybody in. But in building up walls to protect myself, all I had done is created my own solitary confinement. And so at the risk of being hurt, I had to tear down the walls. And I had to let people in and I had to let my heart go out. I had to love at the risk of being betrayed. I had to love at the risk of being rejected.

But then you learn because it's painful. You learn how much to give and who to trust. And then you start finding people. You're like, yeah, I can, I can totally trust this person. You start learning relationship skills and then you start, you know, you start going on. Okay. I can tell a story cause it'll be helpful. I know probably most of the guys here are already married and stuff. And, but, but I think this is so helpful. I was so intent on, on developing skills. I'm like, okay, I got to learn how to, I got to understand women and I got to understand girl. I'll never be able to get married or have a good marriage.

If I can't figure this out. And so I'm like, I'm going to go on a date every single day. And so when I went to university, no joke, I went on a date every day. I just, I just started asking like, Hey, we want to go out and I'm going to go out. Can I take you dinner? Can we go for a hike? Can we go movies? Like, can I, let's go to this. And I just started going dates and it was amazing. Like it was so instructive for me. I learned so much about myself. I learned about women. I started to see when you have that much experience, you start to see like what you like and what you don't like.

And you start noticing, you start comparing, you're like, well, this girl did this and this girl did that. And they all said this, like, hmm, better write that one down. There's a common denominator for women. Right. So I just started going, going after them. Like, what do I need to learn? And so I was going crazy and I started building this community and I started reaching out, connecting with a lot of people and notice who I could trust, who I could bring into my inner circle, so to speak. I started building these friendships and then so the community of God, then I met my wife.

We built our little community and we're genuinely best friends. And then together, we wanted to build this community with our family, which we have with our seven kids, three of whom are adults already. And we have great relationships with them. It's amazing. And so we have that community. And then through our life experience, our coaching, our mentoring, our travels, we now have created a gigantic community across continents and countries.

And in fact, we have friends right here. They're just on the other side of this wall that we met years and years ago. We were driving from Alaska all the way to Panama. We met them and they're over here in Europe and they're visiting us today. We're reconnecting with this community. And then now I lead a community of men because men need a community, man. Men must have a tribe. I mean, and it's great to have my wife. It's great. I have my kids. All men need a tribe of men where they can go.

to get together to not do stupid things like a lot of groups of men do, but to be better and to be challenged to rise up. And so, so I mean, that's a long way back to your question is community is absolutely essential. And I have it now and I'm so adamant about it now because I did not have it then. What I find interesting about that is in a society where we've normalized with men, like we we've normalized men of just being that provider, not having that level of intimacy, that level of connection that you just talked about.

Alex Lange
When you, when you, you said, I want to, I want to be, I want to have an extraordinary marriage. I want, I want to be the best partner. I'm going to go date. I'm going to go, you know, not write down trends. I find that interesting. Because from your story and everything that you've been through, you didn't have a role model to, to influence you in that. Like you intuitively, I guess, came to like, Hey, this is the standard that I want in my life.

Greg Denning
I got there by. Identifying what I didn't.

I don't think I was smart enough to be like this is what I want because I had never seen it. I got there by saying this is what I do not want. I at least know that. And what comes up for me there is like, that's what you can do when you have challenges, you can identify what you don't want and work towards what you do want. And sometimes people allow that challenge to break them down, right. And they go down that path of self destruction. I want to dive back into I think this is an important topic for men.

of loneliness, You said that you were, you felt lonely and you, you, most men put up walls. You had to break down those walls. You had to tear down those walls with barriers. Talk, talk me through that process. If there's a, if there's a man that's listening, that's, that's maybe not the same situation, but they feel lonely. They feel stuck. They feel, you know, like there's nothing out there for them. Talk, talk me through the process that you went and how that can.

you know, apply to others. Yeah. The, the, I guess the scariest part is it feels so vulnerable. It really does. And to tear down those walls, basically, you know, we're using that metaphor of building wall and tearing down a wall. All you're doing essentially is saying, I'm willing, I'm willing to allow myself to connect. I'm willing to allow myself to love at the risk of knowing some people will take advantage and some people will betray you.

But it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. It's better to love and connect and be betrayed than to have never connected at all. And you can mitigate a lot of loss and disconnection and betrayal by being wise, not by being cold, not by being isolated, not by being distant, by being wise, by learning how to read people, by learning how to know how much to share and what to share and who to share it with, by learning...

how to, what was interesting to me, brothers, I had to increase my capacity to love. And I have dramatically increased and still continue to do so. I love people and I can connect with strangers in, in whatever country, whatever.

I can connect with human beings and people who've lived incredibly hard lives or even done incredibly difficult things. And you learn to connect and you learn to love and you can love and you can give without strings attached, without my own insecurities, without desperately needing something in return because I have wholeness here. Like I'm good here.

And I, and I had to do that first. I had to get comfortable in my own skin. I had to heal my own wounds because if I never heal my own wounds, then no matter where I go or who I'm around, I'm bleeding. Right. And it's my own pain that gets exposed and people will come up, right? We have these, we have these wounds, these emotional mental wounds or from our past, from our stakes, failures, whatever it is. And, and I, the way I like to visualize it is they end up being like little nerve endings.

And people will come along and can you imagine just you flick a little nerve ending? we've all had, you know, a cavity or something and you, something cold or hot and you're just like, wow. Or I had a stupid little accident one time and I, I cut myself with a pocket knife, trying to, trying to be a cool guy showing this kid how to use a knife. And I cut myself hilarious, right? I ended up severing my radial nerve. I just cut the nerve, the nerve that goes down and gives feeling to the back of your hand and your thumb. I just severed it completely.

And anytime you touch that, it was just excruciating pain. Right. So for years, I wouldn't let anybody near my wrist. Like, I'm like, no, you touch that sucker. It killed. So I wrestled with my kids and it accidentally hit it. man. I'd be in on the floor and the fetal position. It's so much pain, but that's what it is for a lot of people mentally and emotionally with past relationships or mistakes or their own past, but like bad things happened. And so we have to heal. So the nerve endings, they, they heal up.

And when the wound heals, somebody can come up and touch it, tap it, accidentally bump it. No problem. Right. But if, if I have all these nerve endings exposed, so to speak, these emotional wounds and I go and I interact with people, well, guess what? They're going to get bumped. They're going to get hit and flipped and it's going to hurt. And so I had to get whole and healed and then love more and allow myself to be like,

and love and connect and give without strings attached. Like I can just give this love and I can walk away. It's good. And, and the interesting thing was brother, I so desperately wanted friends and I just really wanted connections. But at first I tried too hard. Maybe you've done it. Maybe the listeners have done it or they've seen somebody you try so hard, you actually repel people. And when I, when I stopped trying so hard, I'm like, well, wait a minute, the best way to.

have friends is to be a friend. The best way to be loved, which is what we want is to love and no expectation, no expectation in return, right? Just love, just care, just serve. And what's amazing is people want to be around you. They want to be, they want to be, they want to have what you radiate. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to be unfailingly kind. I'm going to love people. I'm going to open up my heart.

And I'm just going to radiate that everywhere. I'm not going to let everybody into my inner circle. I'm not going to let everybody in. You don't come in the inner circle unless you've earned it. You really, really got to earn it. But I'm going to love and connect and I'm going to, I'm going to reach out. And man, what it did is you, as you can know, I mean, you've experienced it, your listeners experience. Like when you, when you open up your heart, you start to connect with people and it makes life absolutely priceless. It's, it's one of the best things in life.

is to connect with other good people and to love.

Alex Lange
dropping fire that there the whole thing. I want to first say something came up. You mentioned about in a previous conversation, you had said, you can't be triggered if you don't have triggers. That's what comes up. Like that's, that's the most powerful, you know, if you're listening to this, you might think he's crazy, but you know, that's, if you sit with the thought, it makes sense, and what better way to understand your own triggers than connect with yourself and

There's so many questions I want to ask, but I want to hone in on back to the how I think that maybe I may, and I'm assuming here, but you talked about earlier of journaling every day. How has that helped you understand your triggers so you can't be triggered and within your transformation, how has journaling played a role in that?

Greg Denning
Yeah. yes. I'm glad you keep in on that brother. without.

even knowing I was absolutely clueless. I had no idea what I was doing, but I ended up doing two things that were unbelievable therapy for me. And it was working out crazy hard and including like some martial arts, anything you can do with a boxing bag. man, it is pure therapy. It's just, just take it out on the bag, take it out on the weights. And what happens is you end up taking out there instead of on yourself.

or on the people who are around you just from proximity. Sometimes we're angry about whatever, or we're even just hangry, or we're frustrated, we're hurt, we have our triggers, and it's not that the people around us necessarily did anything, they just bumped into one of our triggers. And I can say remove your triggers because I did it. I was covered in triggers, covered in these nerve endings, and I healed them all, sincerely. I don't have any triggers. I'm not going around getting triggered because I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it.

And so I can ask people to do, I can invite people to do it because I did it. And when you get to that spot, right. You heal. it feels good. So one of those ways was, was taken out in the weights. And then, I love to say it now, take it out on paper, not on people. Take it out on paper, not on people. And so I just started writing. And if you look at back in my, my early journals, it's embarrassing. I was, my gosh, this is retarded. But what I was doing, I was just venting.

All the emotions, all the broken thinking, all the fixed mindsets, all the crap. I was just getting it out. So you're literally vomiting out, getting out on paper. And then the worst thing we can do is just turn around and lick back up our vomit, right? And you get it out and then put it back in and get it out. And people do that. Yeah. Get it out and leave it out. And so I wrote and wrote and wrote and early on, I was just processing like, and what I invite people to do. I'm like, if you're angry, if you're hurting, whatever, you're just absolutely pissed. Grab a sheet of paper.

write it all out. No filtering, no editing, no grammar, no punctuate. Just get it all out and then burn the paper, tear it up, flush it down. Like whatever, get rid of it, but get it out. And they started doing all these psychological studies and these things. They found that if you'll just do that, if you'll write about it consistent and it's hard, people don't do it because it's hard. All the emotional, you'll be crying, you'll be screaming, you'll be pounding. I mean, it all comes up and it is not comfortable.

But it comes up and it comes out. They found one specific thing that I think is so fascinating. They found that if you'll write about the exact same worst moment, this super something negative, painful, you write about it four consecutive times. After the fourth time, they found massive improvements across the board on healing and processing mentally, emotionally, spiritually, just by writing about that thing.

work in negative times. Now, most people won't do it. But to anyone listening, I'm like, look, if you, if you've got something you've been holding onto, if you've got a thorn that's just been there for a long time, write about it, get it in writing and you don't have to keep it if you want to keep it great. But if you want to just get rid of it, that's even better. Just write about it, get rid of it, write about it, get rid of it. Now my writing is capturing ideas and stories and principles and experiences and quotes.

and ways that I can share and help. And so writing now is just this processing way of capturing all the good things in life. And the more you write them, the more you capture them, the more they become a part of who you are. And it's so transformative. That's so powerful. And the reason why I bring that up is because earlier you were talking about beliefs and I...

Our beliefs are our thoughts, like what we really believe. And so I think it's important. We have thousands and thousands of thoughts that come into our mind every day. And that journaling aspect, it's that creative outlet, right? We can close the loop. If we have negative, like you just talked about, if we have negative experiences, we can get the negative experiences out. We can close the loop. We can allow a space for positive thoughts to come in. I don't think, I think men underestimate and myself included in my own journey have underestimated the power of journaling.

and how that can help you grow and even bring this creative side to you. And so I say all that with regards to the journaling. How did journaling help you transform your own beliefs about yourself during that time to what they are now? Yeah. So I throw this out there because it was a hangout for me. At first, when people said journaling, I had this idea.

I gave it this meaning, this definition. I'm like, I got, well, journaling is writing down what happened today. And I was stuck with that. Like nothing happened today. Or I went to the store as stupid. So I didn't journal and I changed it. Like, it's just writing. It's just free writing. All you're doing is just writing. You're trying to get your thoughts on paper. Well, what happened is I started writing about things that I didn't want. And eventually I started writing about things I wanted. And then I write about like, man, I saw this, this girl and she was like this. I want a wife like that. And, I saw this couple. I saw this family.

man, I wish I had a dad. I wish I had, you know, I'm going to be a great dad. And you can see those lines. You can see that happening. My mental process happening in my early journals is like, I saw, I went over to my friend's house and he was asking his dad for his vice. And I wrote in my journal, like, gosh, I had to ask my buddy how to shave. I literally had to ask my friend how to shave. Cause I had no idea. I started getting some hair on my chin. I'm like, I don't even know. I literally have no idea how to get this off my face. And I'd have a dad to teach me and his dad taught him all this stuff. And, and I'm like, man, if I,

went on a date, it must be the most amazing thing to bring a date home and introduce them to your parents. It must be so awesome to get good dating advice from your dad. I would write stuff like in my journal. And so then I'm like, I'm going to be that kind of guy. So the writing kind of created the narrative, which eventually created my own life story. It created what I didn't want, what I did want. And then in my journal, of course, as you're writing what comes up, you're like, man, I really want this, but I'm struggling with consistency.

Or I want to be like this, but I keep doing this. So right there in writing, I mean, you bring it up, you set it on a table. It's in your journal. You're like, I want this, but I'm doing this. And you're like, okay, I'm incongruent. What am I going to do about that? If I say I want to be fit for my entire life, but I keep drinking Dr. Pepper and pounding mint chocolate chip ice cream, which I was doing like incongruence, man, it's never going to line up. And I would capture that in my journal. Like, no, I, I got to stop eating that crap.

If I really truly want to be healthy and fit, I got to stop eating that. And then I would, I'd stop and I cut the stuff out of my life. And then I would, here's another cool thing is when you start writing, the fountains turn on and the inspiration starts to flow. There's a really great book called accidental genius about the writing process. It's amazing. But then you start noticing things because you're writing every day, you're writing, your brain starts looking for things to write and you start noticing things and you look over and you're like, dude, I saw this guy today. He comes in the gym all the time and he treats women like crap.

And I noticed over time, like he doesn't have any good relationships. It goes in your journal. You're like, dude, this plus that equals that. And you start to put things together and that it really is the catalyst of wisdom. And as you're reading, listening to podcasts, good books, having experiences and you're capturing it all, man, you just, you get better and better and better because.

you, it starts to shape your mindset, your heart set and your skillset.

Alex Lange
Those that are listening that mark it, cut it, keep it, listen to it, breathe it, fill it. Greg, I, that right there changed my own aspect right now. Cause like with journaling, I've always like, Hey, what did it, like what went on for me today? So I love that outlet there. I, I want to shift for a second because knowing you, knowing your story,

Obviously you had a bunch of challenges as a 16 year old, but you've also experienced some financial hardships, some challenging moments as an adult within your marriage, within your family. Like I said, I followed you and I remember reading about your time in Alaska and your child, you got a car accident and one of your daughters I think had broken from the waist down or something, something catastrophic. How would...

I say all that and preface it with how did that time really young in your life help you through the challenging moments in the month? Your perspective around it is amazing. Like your mindset around all the challenges as an adult. How did that play a role?

Greg Denning
Yeah, this is really cool that you bring this up because my mind went there early on when you were when you're talking about pain and power. It was like I briefly saw this timeline of my own life. You look back,

over the last 30 years. And you can see, I can see five or six really painful spots, right? The car accident in Alaska where our daughter got ejected. She was three years old, snapped her femur. She was in a full body cast for 14 weeks in Alaska. Another time in Nicaragua where, and life will do this for some reason. I don't know why, but like,

That's where the saying when it rains, it pours. That's where that came from. Like when, you know, something falls apart and then everything falls apart. It was one of those moments where we just hit an absolute rock bottom low and another time in another place. And so you look back through our marriage times. We literally lost everything 2008 when the economy dropped. I was heavy in both real estate and stocks and both those things like died. And I got my butt handed to me, right.

And, and so you look back over those, those times and you realize like looking, looking back from now where we are, because of how we chose to respond to them, we were able to move up, to move forward, to progress where others who went through similar things, the way they responded to where they went and a lot of them got stayed stuck or they got, they, they stopped investing. They stopped trying. They stopped taking risks. They stopped living. They just, just shrunk down and they acquiesced. They settled.

And they stayed small. But I think what happened for me was because, because I had been through such difficult times and had chosen to use it as a reason instead of an excuse that when hard times came up again, what was super awesome is I mentally I'd be like, Hey, I've done hard things before. I can figure this out. And the way, okay. So here's, here's how you do it. This, this, and this is so powerful for everybody listening. This is what you do.

with hard times, especially hard times in your past, you start reprocessing them and repackaging them by saying, what did I learn from that? How am I better? Because I went through that and that's how you start to heal. And that's how you access the power. And I had been through that journey before I met Rachel. I'm like, what, like those years from 16, 17, 18, those years sucked, man, they were hard. But, but even in my late teens, early twenties, I was looking back and like,

Gosh, I gained a lot. I'm way stronger. I'm more empathetic. Like I can understand people when they're really suffering. I'm like, yeah, I get it. Cause I've been there. I I'm way better at relationships because of my loneliness. I'm, I'm way more gritty. I can endure a lot more because I went through that. I can figure out solutions because I had nothing. you know, you, you, you have a hard financial time and mentally I'm, I'm immediate. I'm like, yeah, but I had zero food, like no food. So.

having a tough financial month doesn't even like whatever I had no food man. And the contrast is so powerful. And so that framework mentally then pops forward, right? So then something happens and you're like, okay, this sucks. This is horrible, but I can do hard things and I can get through this. And actually I'm going to be better and wiser because of this. And every single like really hard low point in our life, we've come out significantly better afterwards.

because of how we chose to respond to it, because of what we chose to learn from it. You go touch the stove and man, it burns. It hurts so bad. But then you learn not to touch the stove, but still cook great meals. Where some people that touch the stove are like, I'm never going near it ever again. I'm just going to eat raw food for the rest of my life. Right?

And it's how we choose to respond and learn from it and grow from it and become way better because of it. Literally brother, I wholeheartedly believe like our most painful moments, our worst days are our best days. Truly.

Alex Lange
They tell you the most about yourself. You know, I remember talking with you and you were like, Hey, my worst days tell me the most about myself. And I love that because that mindset there, that's an elite, first of all, that's an elite level of awareness when you can remove good and bad from any situation and have the curiosity going back to the curiosity mindset of what is the lesson there for me to be learned. And I think there's so many men out there, people, like people,

that miss the lesson, the opportunity for the lesson learned. And sometimes I think that it's universe, it's God, it's whatever the higher source is, presenting them another opportunity to learn that lesson, right? It reminds me of what we, if we don't repair, we repeat. And so that kind of, that all comes there for me. I wanna dive into, I'm coming to a close. I know I've been long -winded, but it's just fascinating everything that you,

that you talk about is very fascinating. We talk about heart set and in an era where I know a lot of men that are very, I say masculine driven, but they're brash, they're in your face. It's all about physical fitness. It's all, which it's important. That's a very important pillar, but there's this connection piece. There's this heart centered leadership. You preach it, you live it. Dive into that for me for a second.

Greg Denning

Yeah. Again, it's, it's one of those, skills and abilities that has to be cultivated. And if it's not deliberately cultivated, it's just kind of blatantly missing. Like you were pointing out some of those examples and it's especially easy for men to be whatever all the bravado or whatever it is in business. Like I'm just cutthroat businessman and they just pursue business or they pursue fitness or whatever it is they're doing. But we all have to realize that.

that we are spiritual beings and we are emotional beings and emotion is the greatest driving force in life. It really is. And almost everything we do, almost every decision we make in spite of how we tell ourselves it's logical, almost every single decision we make is somehow emotional. It's something we want to feel. If we'll allow ourselves to expand, so to speak, in our heart, I always have this image. When I was a little kid, we watched the Grinch who stole Christmas and I see his heart increasing four sizes. I always see that mentally.

If we let our heart increase in its size and we expand our ability to feel more and not to be hypersensitive, not to be over emotional, but we have to allow ourselves to be reachable and teachable and touchable. Like things need to affect us. We, we need to see sad thing that cry. We need to see horrible things like the, the human trafficking and get angry and livid.

and do our part to put an end to the evil that's happening. We need to have compassion enough to when we see people are struggling, we have a moral obligation to do something about it. And so the heart said is like, I'm going to be kind, I'm going to be generous, I'm going to be forgiving to myself and others, and I'm going to let these good emotions, the compassion, empathy,

I'm going to let all those things just radiate from me because the one thing a man and every person can never, ever avoid is radiating something. We all just radiate period. We all give off an energy so we can choose what we do with it. We can choose how we feel, or we can just let the default just do whatever, do whatever it does. And it's the default setting is uninspiring to say the least, but I want to be the kind of man. And this has changed everything in my life where if I have the right heart set,

And my heart's in the right place for the right reason. I'm living by the right thing policy. I gotta do the right thing for the right reason, no matter what. I just do the right thing. And even, I learned this great book from, or this great principle from a book called, the anatomy of peace. They talk about how you can have a heart at peace or a heart at war. And they share this example of this general in this war, who even though he was in the midst of war, still had a heart of peace.

And he had to go in and win and he did win, but he was very forgiving. And he let prisoners go and he sent his doctors to help the enemies injured, right? They're casualties. And he still had a beautiful heart at peace, even in the midst of war. And we can do that same thing as men. We can discipline and correct our kids with an absolute heart of love. And

We can listen to our wives and work through differences and difficulties and challenges with a heart of love and patience and forgiveness. And we can go to work with people. We can even be crazy competitive. We can get on the sport field or political arena, financial. We can be so I'm super competitive. Like I want to go out there. You like you get on the mat with me or we get in a game. Like I'm going to go all out, but I'm going to be doing it with a huge smile on my face. And if you beat me.

I'm going to be like, dude, kudos. That was rad. That was an amazing move. If I slam you, I'm going to help you back up here. I got this. And here's why this work. This is what you do better. Right. I thought if I had to be competitive, I had to be like, dude, I'm going to beat you up. You're horrible. You're the enemy. I'm like, no. Like if I get in the ring with somebody and we're going on, I'm like, bro, we better be laughing, have a great time going balls out. One of us is going down, but we're going to have a blast beating on each other. I can have my heart in the right place.

And that's what I'm talking about. And if we get the heart in the right place, then I'm good with me. I'm good with God, good with my wife. I'm good with my kids. I'm good with everyone I interact with because my heart's in the right place. And it's a choice. It's always a choice.

Alex Lange
That correlates to my next question. before we close is going back to that transformation framework, right? We talked about mindset. We talked about heart set. Let's talk about skillset. You have studied your, your, I read your bio. You're passionate about.

peak human performance, you've coached thousands of men being a better father, being a better husband, being a better man. It is a skillset. Absolutely. Over the course of 20 years, you talked about it early on taking notes, you know, jotting down trends, being the better, you know, that, that better overall, what are you seeing that can help men take that step? What's the, how can we build this skillset in a three to four minute elevator, you know, pitch, so to speak.

Greg Denning
You know, the one thing that has absolutely transformed my life is, is what we could call bibliotherapy. It's just reading books. I've averaged a book a week for over 25 years. I still do, either listening to a book through audible or reading an ebook or reading an actual book. I've got tons of books right here in front of me. You can see the books behind me on my bookshelf. when we first got married, my wife and I would buy books. If we had money left over, we'd pay the bills and buy groceries. And we made it an absolute priority. We didn't, we didn't even own a TV for the first.

Like 20 years of our marriage, because we wanted our kids to love reading last year. My daughter read 127 solid books. She's 16, 127 solid books in one calendar year. That'll change your life. And so if you just read a little bit every day, even 10 minutes, I mean, ideally you're spending 30 to 60 minutes in a book every day. I read every morning. I read every night before bed, right? Some nights.

It's an hour, some nights it's a couple of minutes because I'm spent. It's late. We had a rough day, but I don't miss it. It's not all or nothing. It's like every single day, no matter what I spend time in a good book, that's going to help me be a better man. And of course that's a lot of skills. And that's, I created the masterclass to be the man masterclass. Cause I wanted to take the best stuff that I've gleaned over 20 plus years.

from people and experiences and experimenting and books and podcasts and seminars. And I've personally spent, I think my wife and I, we, we spent over $150 ,000 in books, courses, training, coaching masterminds. I mean, we spent a ton of money on development. I want to take the very best stuff and I want to put it in something that can be consumed every single day. Right. So inside the masterclass, I did a year's worth of content that can be consumed in small increments every day as these little reminders are like, yeah.

that today to this, I can be a better listener today, or here's one little framework when you're looking for real estate investments or, man, gosh, I need to stop eating that because it's doing this to my body. So all these little pieces, all these little skills we have to develop to become great men. And, and the absolute truth is here's where it comes down to brother. And a lot of people shy away from this. They get intimidated by it. I get excited by it in order to be a world -class man.

a phenomenal husband and father and businessman. There's no other way. The only way is to become really, really good at several things. Not one thing, not two things, not even three things. The only way to live a holistic, phenomenal life as a man, and by my definition to be the man, you have to become really good at several things. And the way to do that is just daily skill development.

across the roles that we have as men. And it's incredible how fast it compounds in your favor, how quickly you can make improvements and changes to yourself and therefore your results. And of course results don't lie. So we might be like, I've got skills, right? I'm responsible. I'm a great guy. Well, let's look at your results. Results don't lie. And if your results suck, you've got to question your methods and your mindsets and your heart set and your skillset.

Alex Lange
I love that on all fronts because you know.

There's so many, there's so much out there that, you know, like, and we especially can cloud our, we can cloud our space by trying to look externally. But something that you said there is it all starts with a connection to self, right? Like I think if I was able to sum up the most important message is like creating this connection to self. And you said something with your, with you and your wife investing in personal development, men, if you're hearing this, your self -worth matters.

And when you put yourself first, it doesn't mean that you're pushing all these other relationships away. It means that you're filling your cup so you can fill others cup with a full cup, not an empty cup. So I love what you said there and all of that because that's the most important piece. If you don't have a connection, if you don't have a purpose, if you don't know where you're going, where you're driving to, you can't show up for others the way that you want to because you don't even know how to show up for yourself. So I really love that, Greg, because that's the most important.

important and powerful message of this whole podcast. You said a lot there, so I don't want to say nothing else is important, but I take away connection to self education. That's how you got from that painful, homeless, hungry 16 year old to this extraordinary life where you see no good, no bad, but every situation is a lesson. Greg, I close with this and I know that you work with with men.

please, how can people get in contact with you? What programs do you have? If you have any availabilities for men to jump with you.

Greg Denning
Yeah, absolutely. Let me share two little frameworks with what you were saying right there that I think changed everything for me. One is this idea you can't draw from an empty well, like you're saying, that you cannot draw from an empty well, so you gotta fill the well. And then this framework that I learned, I was in my early 20s when I read it, read some similar idea and it changed everything for me. So the absolute.

best thing you can do for God or for mankind is to make the most of yourself. Let us in the absolute best thing you can do for man or for God is to make the most of yourself. So you have more to give. And that's the framework that this drove me to, to be my best self. So I, I can be an asset. Like my mission is to be an asset for humanity. And there's a little French phrase. It's noblesse oblige.

And, and directly translate means our, our nobility obligates us to be kind and generous. And then that's, that's manliness right there. That's true manliness. But, so people connected to me again, be the man podcast, the be man app. I have an app, it's free app. You can download it. So are getting access to tools, tips, strategies right away to how to, get your fitness dialed in your family dialed in and your finances dialed in and not just dialed in, but extraordinary levels. we have the.

Extraordinary Family Life podcast, the Be A Man Masterclass. That's a tribe of really great men, businessmen, entrepreneurs, and families who are leveling up. It's a phenomenal group. Plus the coaching, we meet every week live. And then I do do a little bit of one -on -one coaching. It's quite expensive because it's just that personal, individualized, custom time, but it's worth it because it totally transforms lives.

But they can reach me. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I have a YouTube channel. So follow me, download the app, disconnect me, reach out. Love to answer questions. I love to help. I'm here to be an asset to men. It's part of my life's work to help men be the best version of themselves.

Alex Lange
Greg, thank you for your time today. For anyone that's listening that has never heard of Greg Denning, now you have. Please check him out. Check him and his wife's Instagram, the WorldSchooling family.

The travels they do, everything that he, everything that he's about, I love. So I just want to say thank you for your time today. And I look forward to the next time, whenever that may be.

Greg Denning
Yeah, thanks, brother. So good to connect again,