A Year To Live

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. What if you only had one year to live? How would you spend it? What would you want to do? Learn. Experience. And how would you treat the people around you? It's a powerful question, isn't it? Because you know what? When people know they're gonna die, that's when they start to live. It's this weird paradox, really. We're dying. Every breath we take, we're one step closer to the grave. It's kind of dim, but I don't see it that way. I look at life and I say, whenever I go to a funeral or someone, a loved one has passed away. I don't even look at death. I look at death differently than most people. When I look at death, I almost think, if the person's going on a vacation and. And I'll see them one day. But I don't feel that sense of loss when someone has passed me. That was close, because for some, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I believe in the universe that the energy is always there, never dies. And while I could feel lost and I could feel that I miss that person, it doesn't have the hard feelings that it does for some people. And I look at death because it's a reminder for me to live. So what would you do? This question came into focus. I was at a Tony Robbins seminar, and we're going through the event, and we're kind of doing these visualizations as to what life would be like if it was our ideal life. But at some point, we looked at the relationships that were in our life, because relationships, really, life is relationships, and relationships are energy. If you want to look at someone's happiness, you look directly at the relationships they have with others, because we need people, right? We need human contact in order to be happy. One of the realizations coming away from the seminar was how much I love my father. And I think how it was for me was that it was very difficult. Like, I couldn't. It felt awkward to just go up to my father and say, hey, dad, love you. You know, he'd be like, where the hell is this coming from? Because it wasn't a common practice. It wasn't something that I did on the regular basis. And so there was always this kind of bumping of heads with my father and I. So it felt awkward to just tell him that I loved him. Having gone to this event, one of my big epiphanies was that, you know, I can't wait. I can't wait to say I love you. My father is the most important person in my life. He's taught me how to use my hands. And so many aspects of my personality I get from my father as well. And so I needed to tell him that I loved him. And he was shocked when I did. I remember another moment too. I was. I had just woken up and I had it. There was a dream I had. I had a dream that my father had passed away. And I woke up, I felt very. I felt very distraught. And he was walking in the hallway and I kind of trailed behind him. And then I said, I said, dad. And he turned around and I hugged him and I started crying. I'm getting emotional thinking about it and I started crying. I said, dad, I love you. And he's like, what happened? In the Italian mindset, he's like, what happened? What happened? And I'm like, I had a dream. And this, the Italians, they could be very superstitious, like, oh God, oh God, you gotta get all my bills. I gotta get all this stuff ready. You had a dream. Oh, man. He starts thinking about all this stuff that the dream in some way was predicting the future. But yeah, I just hugged him and told him I loved him. And it felt really good because it wasn't something that I commonly shared. And even if you assume that it's known, it's something different when it's expressed. That's another reason why I travel. Because you never know what tomorrow is going to bring, right? Everyone you put off. Oh, you know what, I'm going to travel, you know, but I'm going to wait a few years because I want to do, you know, I want to save up some extra money or whatever it may be. You end up putting it off and then guess what happens that day doesn't come. Maybe you become terminally ill, maybe you become married or you, you know, now you have a son or a daughter, you know what I mean? You just don't know what life is going to bring at you. So you got to follow your heart. You got to do the things that you love. You got to do the things you want. Now that's one of the reasons why twice a year I go and travel because it's not even, it's a non negotiable for me. I have to like, I have very ambitious travel goals and it's not because I just want to see different places, but I, I want to see all the beauty in the world. I look at pictures and things and even pictures of the world can bring tears to my eyes because I just see there's so much beauty in the world and the people I meet, the experiences are just so rich. That is one of the things I put as a priority in my life. What are they for you? Right? Maybe, you know, maybe you don't like to travel. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's just putting more family time, but you've been putting extra time and work because you think that's what your family really wants. I remember I was working at Jefferies and Company. It was an investment bank. And I was speaking to one of the traders who worked in mergers and acquisitions. And he was telling me about his time prior to working at the company that we were. We were currently at and how the one thing he missed more than anything, the one his biggest regret, it was that he wasn't there for his son's baseball games. He worked till 9, 10 o' clock at nights working on deals. The only thing that really mattered to him, the only thing he wanted was to be there for his son and to watch his son grow up. But he missed all of it. He missed all of it because he thought that this was more important. Not to say that he didn't provide for his family, but when you look at the grand scheme of things, his family, I'm sure his family would have been fine regardless if he brought home $100,000 versus $700,000. Maybe the, you know, the would have been less comfortable, whatever. But that's not what's important. You go to. I feel like I'm getting going off on a tangent now, but maybe I'm as meant to go this way. What is really important? I go to third world countries and I see kids who barely have anything to eat, smiling and playing in the street. And then you come over here to Fairfield County. Kids who have everything and they're depressed and they have. They're on, you know, they're on medication. Something's off. Something is off. So what is it? I want you to ask yourself that question. I feel like it took a different turn than when I was going. But nevertheless, it is. What is. What is important to you? What is important? If you had one year to live, what would you want to experience? Take a little pen and paper. I'm kind of say these questions slow. This way I'll give you a little bit of time to just write them down. Who would you spend it with? If you had one year to live, who would you let know that they mattered and that you cared for if you had one year to live, what would you want to learn? And if you had one year to live, what would you do differently than how you're currently living today? If you want more info on this, feel free to give me a call. We'll go through this plan together and we'll plan a year. We'll plan stuff that's going to make your life rich because that's all it's about, really, all it's about. Guys, thank you so, so much for tuning in. I hope you got a lot out of this. I always found that this is a powerful question I ask and it's one of the reasons why I don't put off things that I really want, like travel. Big one for me. But I don't put off those experiences because I know that time can fly by in the blink of an eye. So thank you so, so much for tuning in. I wish you guys an awesome week. God bless and I will see you next week.