Stay ConnectedTHE podcast for parents with big dreams who want to create an EXTRAORDINARY lifestyle but feel stuck.
Greg and Rachel Denning are parents of 7 children whom they’ve traveled with to 60+ countries on 5 continents — all while homeschooling and building a multi-six-figure location independent biz.
Let them show you how to finally break through what’s holding you back so you can achieve your biggest dreams — even with a family!
Copyright: © Greg & Rachel Denning
Welcome to the podcast! We’re discussing something today that is crucially important to raising healthy, well-adjusted kids.
We want to teach them to NOT be quitters, to follow through, and to have grit and perseverance.
But in this episode, we lay out some arguments which show that the way many parents are trying to accomplish this is actually having the opposite effect.
When we make a six-year-old take dance class even though she hates it but we don’t want her to be a ‘quitter’, what we’re actually doing is engendering resentment — and she’s not actually learning the lesson we’re trying to teach.
Don’t worry! We’ve got some specific strategies for getting those outcomes you want. But you might be surprised that they’re not what you expected. Listen now to learn what they are.
If you haven’t already, make sure to get our Must-Read Book Recommendations for creating an Extraordinary Family Life. We have books on parenting, marriage, health, finances, and lifestyle design. Plus get a free ebook that will change your life — The Majesty of Calmness.
Hey everyone. We hope you’re having a great week. I know Greg and I are excited to have some sunshine and warmer weather after two cloudy and cold weeks.
Today we’re discussing something which — at first glance — seems overly simplistic. We’re talking about HOW to wake up.
And yet, waking up is something every one of us does and we do it every single day of our life. There’s an incredible power that comes when we can learn to do BETTER the things we do consistently. One of those things is waking up.
There are specific ways to be more intentional about waking up each morning. And when you learn how to control and your direct your mornings, it provides a lot of power for controlling and directing your life. Helping your mornings to go better helps your life to go better.
Listen to this episode now to learn the strategies we’ve been using for the past 20 years to design our mornings — which then led to designing our life.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Today we are diving into a detailed look at what living an ‘extraordinary’ life looks like on the day-to-day. The majority of your life — and ours — is spent in daily activities that can be mundane. Dishes, laundry, errands.
Even with a travel lifestyle like ours, we spend most of our time sitting in a vehicle on a road trip or waiting in an airport. How do you make the ordinary, routine, ‘boring’ daily interactions more meaningful and purpose-filled?
We’ll share specific strategies that we’ve used for over a decade to turn the transactional into transformational.
If you’ve ever felt that life is like the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ then you definitely want to listen to this episode so you can learn how to get unstuck and make the daily interactions you’re ALREADY having with your spouse and children special, memorable, and magical.
This episode is sponsored by our Be Your Best Self Bundle.
The Strength of Your Family Begins With the Strength of the FOUNDATION = YOU
YOU are the foundation of your family. You have to be strong to carry the load of responsibility.
The 'BEST SELF' Bundle will lighten the burden with tools that help you DO and BE more with less stress and more confidence.
Greg loves to teach that ‘A Rising Tide Lifts ALL Boats’
When the tide comes it, it lifts all the boats in the harbor.
YOU can be the tide in your family. Family life gets better when YOU get better.
How YOU Live YOUR Life is How You Teach Your Children to Live Theirs -- Be Someone Worth Modeling
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Welcome to the podcast! In this episode Greg and I are answering a question about clashing cultures — what to do when the status quo conflicts with your unconventional lifestyle choices — especially if the clash is happening in your own family.
It’s not uncommon for someone like you to try to do life differently and then to get ‘thrown under the bus’ by the naysayers and ‘reality checkers’.
Maybe you want to homeschool, travel with your family, eat a different way than you were raised, or to take a different path in college or career than the generation before you.
How do you handle the unavoidable conflict that arises from your unconventional choices?
Is it best to create healthy distance and accept these differences? Or is there a way to create agreement and harmony despite diametrically opposed viewpoints?
Listen now to hear the answer!
This episode is sponsored by our Be Your Best Self Bundle.
The Strength of Your Family Begins With the Strength of the FOUNDATION = YOU
YOU are the foundation of your family. You have to be strong to carry the load of responsibility.
The 'BEST SELF' Bundle will lighten the burden with tools that help you DO and BE more with less stress and more confidence.
Greg loves to teach that ‘A Rising Tide Lifts ALL Boats’
When the tide comes it, it lifts all the boats in the harbor.
YOU can be the tide in your family. Family life gets better when YOU get better.
How YOU Live YOUR Life is How You Teach Your Children to Live Theirs -- Be Someone Worth Modeling
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Welcome back to the podcast! In this episode Greg and I are answering some often asked questions about how to get your spouse on board.
This could be getting them on board with your big dreams and goals, or simply on board with the process of growing and improving. There’s nothing worse than starting to learn, grow, and develop as a person but then to feel that your spouse is getting left behind or, even worse, creating their own self-sabotage.
One question we received said,
As I’ve focused hard on self-improvement over the last 18 months, and not seen my wife doing much to try to improve with me, it has been hard not to judge her and become frustrated with her.
That has been especially true with our parenting. It’s extremely painful to observe her parenting and I’m trying to think of what might be affecting her parenting negatively.”
We’ll discuss several approaches than can be used to help make tricky situations like this one easier.
We’ll also explain what a ‘breaking point’ is and why every marriage needs to face one — or several of them.
This episode is sponsored by our Creating an Extraordinary Marriage Bundle.
Why settle for a a good or okay marriage when you can have an extraordinary one?
Marriage isn’t static. It’s constantly in a state of flux. So if you’re not actively working on growing closer in your marriage then by default you’re working on your divorce. You can’t afford to spend even one day working on your divorce, so if you’re not already being proactive it’s time to make a change.
Many of us believe that if our spouse would change then your marriage would be better. But the truth is you can’t wait around for you spouse to change. It is within your power to improve your marriage — even if your spouse won’t change.
That’s the good news — it only takes ONE person to ‘be the tide’ and make a difference in your marriage. And that person is YOU.
Learn how to create regular daily, weekly, monthly and yearly rituals to remind you that you’re a man and woman in love — and building a legacy.
Unite as a couple, peruse shared dreams, and become an example of love and relationship that everyone — including your children — admires and looks up to.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Are you ready to start dreaming bigger and living more intentionally — both for yourself and your family?
In this episode, Greg and I dive into one of our favorite topics — dreaming BIG and setting bold, meaningful goals that challenge you to grow into the person capable of achieving them.
We talk about why dreaming is not just a nice idea — it's essential. Big dreams expand your vision and help you rise above the limitations of your current reality. As Greg often says,
“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them.”
We’ll walk you through how to reflect on the past year, take the lessons you’ve learned, and paint a fresh vision for what’s possible this year and beyond.
We also explore:
If you’re tired of living reactively and you’re ready to become more deliberate and aligned with the life you truly want — this conversation is for you.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Join the Do More With Less Stress Workshop Series for busy moms
Become a Founding Member of our Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method
Join Greg’s 7-Day Challenge
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Read our reviews here: https://podcast.extraordinaryfamilylife.com/reviews/
Welcome to this episode where we will be discussing a sensitive and sometimes frightening topic to many parents — and that’s WHY and HOW to expose your children to the darkness in order to help them be stronger and more prepared to face and fight evil and malice in the world (which does exist, in case you’re like I used to be and naively thought there are no ‘bad people’ in the world or that bad things don’t happen to me or my family.
We’ll also touch on the Law of Attraction or Expectation and how that works into our encounters with evil -- as well as why allowing your children to choose the music and movies they listen to or watch can be a helpful place to start discussions that should be taking place regularly if you want to help your kids develop resilience.
This episode is sponsored by Mr. Denning’s Habits for a Successful Life — a live, online class for teenagers.
After studying personal development for 20 years, we looked far and wide for a class that would teach our teenagers something MORE important than academics — namely HOW to practice self-leadership and manage their minds, emotions, and habits in order to create a happy and fulfilled life.
When we couldn’t find what we were looking for we decided to create it ourselves and offer it to other amazing families.
Teens absolutely LOVE this class and all of Mr. Denning’s stories from his travels to 48 countries. The most recent 5-star review left this week by a teenager says:
“This class was AMAZING! It has helped me get a new perspective and motivated me to shape my life into how I want it to turn out. I loved every minute of it, and I wholeheartedly recommend others try it as well!”
If you have teenagers — or know someone who does — please share this class with them.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Join the Do More With Less Stress Workshop Series for busy moms
Become a Founding Member of our Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method
Join Greg’s 7-Day Challenge
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Read our reviews here: https://podcast.extraordinaryfamilylife.com/reviews/
In this episode, we’re discussing teen mental health and strategies for helping them not only overcome mental health challenges but to learn to thrive despite their difficult circumstances. We’re empathetic to the real struggles and suffering that parents and youth are dealing with and want to provide hope in this episode.
Through personal experience, as well as from working with thousands of youth, and doing decades of research, we’ve discovered what actually works to help teens deal with the challenges they face.
We know that not every situation is black and white with clear-cut answers or solutions but this episode will provide some puzzle pieces that may fit perfectly for your unique situation.
Please use what you can and share it with others who may need to hear this message.
This episode is sponsored by Mr. Denning’s Habits for a Successful Life — a live, online class for teenagers.
After studying personal development for 20 years, we looked far and wide for a class that would teach our teenagers something MORE important than academics — namely HOW to practice self-leadership and manage their minds, emotions, and habits in order to create a happy and fulfilled life.
When we couldn’t find what we were looking for we decided to create it ourselves and offer it to other amazing families.
Teens absolutely LOVE this class and all of Mr. Denning’s stories from his travels to 48 countries.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Join the Do More With Less Stress Workshop Series for busy moms
Become a Founding Member of our Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method
Join Greg’s 7-Day Challenge
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Read our reviews here: https://podcast.extraordinaryfamilylife.com/reviews/
In this episode, we’re talking about Failure to Launch syndrome — a significant growing phenomenon among young adults who are not successfully making the transition to adulthood.
Its symptoms include young adults who continue to live at home or to be supported by their parents, YA who don’t contribute financially to their own living expenses and begin to withdraw from the world and society.
Failure to launch — known as Peter Pan syndrome in the U.S. -- can take the form of unrealistic (or NO) goals, blaming others for their situation, narcissism, a lack of motivation to change, low levels of persistence, high expectations without reciprocation, lack of basic adult skills, and no ‘liftoff’ into adult responsibilities — among other things.
In the extreme, it can lead to the proverbial 30-year-old living in the basement and can be accompanied by anxiety, depression, and sometimes suicide.
In this episode, Greg and I discuss the contributing factors to failure to launch plus strategies to avoid it. Whether you have toddlers or teens (or are one yourself), you NEED to listen to this!
But first — this episode is sponsored by Habits for a Successful Life — a live, online class for teenagers.
After studying personal development for 20 years, we looked far and wide for a class that would teach our teenagers something MORE important than academics — namely HOW to practice self-leadership and manage their minds, emotions, and habits in order to create a happy and fulfilled life.
When we couldn’t find what we were looking for we decided to create it ourselves and offer it to other amazing families.
Teens absolutely LOVE this class and all of Mr. Denning’s stories from his travels to 48 countries. They say things like:
"This class changed my life! I have much better personal habits and I feel like I was given the keys to having a totally epic future. Mr. Denning is great at pushing us out of our comfort zones, while still being encouraging and supportive. Five stars are not enought to sum up how amazing and life-changing this class truly is!"
🎉 Enrollment is now open for our Fall 2025
Habits for a Successful Life Online Class for Teens → Learn More Here
Help your teen build life skills, confidence, and discipline.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Enrollment is open for the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Join the Do More With Less Stress Workshop Series for busy moms
Join Greg’s 7-Day Challenge
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
Read our reviews here: https://podcast.extraordinaryfamilylife.com/reviews/
We often receive emails from parents or spouses asking questions -- we love it. (Email us your questions at support @ extraordinaryfamilylife.com)
This email asked us:
“How can our family create balance and not feel guilty for doing things we enjoy (Netflix, video games, etc.) that aren’t necessarily productive (toward achieving our goals)?”
Great question!
We've also experienced the 'gap' between the reality of where we are and where we want to go/be (our BIG dream or goal).
Sometimes that gap is painful.
And it often requires that we sacrifice, give up, or exchange some of what we're doing now in order to achieve what we really want to have. We call this The Exchange Rate.
But where there's pain there's power.
And you can use that power to transform your life.
RESOURCES:
Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.
How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms
Follow us on Instagram: @worldschoolfamily or @greg.denning
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Rachel's Family Systems & Charts
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner
JOIN GREG'S 90-DAY HEALTH & FITNESS CHALLENGE!
Gather with us at the World School Family (Beach & Farm) Resort in Portugal
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