A Year To Live (Part 2)

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. What if you had one year to live? How would you spend that next year? Who are the people that you would surround yourself with? What are the experiences you would want to have? What would you want to learn? What would you want to do? What would you want to see? These are the important questions that we don't ask ourselves until we're faced with that question. I was at a retreat once, and they said the question was asked, when do people start to live? When they know they're going to die. And the irony in that is that every single moment, every breath, is one step closer to our last. It sounds kind of morbid, but it's not. It's a reminder. It's a reminder that every death is a blessing. I mean, every death. Well, every life is a blessing, too, but every day is a blessing. But we kind of get stuck in this way of being that we. We forget, and we forget to look at life like that. I posed this question on my Facebook page and just put on there, what if you only had, you know, same question. What if you only had one year to live? What would you do? How would you spend it? And everyone was responding. And the irony in this was that so many people were responding, and they realized through the question that they were living life, that they wouldn't change anything. They were living the way they would want to. There might have been some tweaks. Maybe it was, you know, one of my friends was saying that, you know, she would literally just walk rescue dogs. She gets so much joy out of just doing that. And that she. It's not even that she doesn't like her job, she loves her job, but she would spend all of her time walking rescue dogs. And that's. That's really beautiful to realize that by asking the right questions, you could realize that you're actually living it now like you're living your life the way you want to, as if you were dying. I mean, that's very powerful. But the problem comes when we don't ask the question and we don't realize that, and we take. Tend to take things for granted. You hear what I'm saying? When we think of what we want in life, we often put the big house by the water, the. The sports car, more time, and the list goes on and on. I was doing an exercise where I was writing down the things that I wanted to accomplish in my life, and then what would that give me as a result of completing those tasks or Accomplishing those, those objectives. How would I feel afterwards? And as I was writing these, the objectives, and I was writing down what I would feel and how that would change my life, I was noticed that there was a. There was a sequence, something that was. I noticed there was a commonality, something that I was not in my awareness before. It might have been like, oh, building my company to XYZ revenues. What would that do? Like, oh, yeah, I could feel peace. What would I do when I have my body this certain way? Oh, I would go out running every morning and I would make it a point to be outside. Well, what if this, you know, you had the business set up where you had that freedom? Oh, well, then I would take breaks in the middle of the day, and I would just enjoy being outside. I would take coffee breaks with friends. And I'm writing down all these things and I'm looking at. I'm like, wait a minute, like, looking at it, confused. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? I don't need to accomplish any of this in order to get what I want.

I'm like, what the hell's going on? I don't need to accomplish any of these goals in order to live the life I want to live now. And it was like. It was like, poof, the top blew off my head because I just kept.

Scratching my head, like, wait, how does this even make sense? You know, all the things we're going after, we think that we need in order to feel good enough to be okay, in order to be. Give ourselves permission, in order to feel a certain way. And I might have even done a post on this before, but nevertheless, I think it's something that you can never be reminded enough. Is that what we have? We have everything we need now to enjoy and be happy. Now, when you look at. I was watching a interview on YouTube. I don't remember the guy's name, Jonathan something. And I think the guy who's interviewing was Paul something. I don't even know what he was saying was, people put off happiness because they think, oh, well, once I have the job, you know, earning X amount of dollars per year, or I'm earning, you know, I have the. The salary of $100,000 a year, then I can start to enjoy. But more often than not, there's a greater responsibility. So as you're building these companies now, all of a sudden you have tens, twenties, hundreds, thousands of people who are relying on you for their livelihood. That's not something you take lightly. If anything, that adds, I mean, I agree and disagree, but I'll go into that later. But that adds to the amount of stress that I mean, because I guess again, it depends how you look at it. But you could say that your responsibilities increase as you grow in life, as you become more. There's more demanded of you. And to think that when we have something far out in the future, that then will be okay and it gives us permission to live, that's going to come with its own set of responsibilities and its own set of whatever characteristics, for lack of better words. It's like being like, I want to be a parent, right? And so everyone. That happens a lot with women, they have this biological clock ticking. And then I have had friends where they've gotten married with the intention of wanting to start a family, only to realize afterward that they married the wrong guy. And we have to realize that. So it doesn't matter what's. At some point in the future. We don't have to. There's not some magic thing in the future that's going to make us feel the things we want to feel now. Because really all it is comes down to is a decision. I could walk you through a guided meditation and I can make you feel any of the feelings you want to feel now. You might. One of the things that you get from becoming and growing into that person you want to become is that feeling of pride, that feeling of growth. And that alone is very impactful. I mean, I've done things with like weightlifting competitions, my business school, that I feel very proud of. But if you ask me what the top 10, I mean, there were great experiences, but in terms of happiest moments in my life, they don't even. They're not even in the top 10. I'm proud of them. I feel very fulfilled for having them. But in terms of happiness and the emotions that we say we want to feel, they have nothing to do with it. You could look at. So going back to the example I just gave you, you could look at someone who has wealth abundance in terms of how we describe it. Because what is wealth and abundance? In the Western world, especially here in the United States, we think of wealth and abundance as some nominal amount, like earning $50 million a year, living in this beautiful house by the water with 20,000 square feet, and driving a Mercedes or a BMW, whatever it is, that has. How some people describe success, but that's not. But there's something flawed even in that definition. I mean, those are. Those can be traits of a successful person, right? Or a financially successful person. Those could be traits, but that's not success. I mean, think of what it is you want out of all those things. We try to acquire all these things for one reason. And that one reason is we want to be happy. We want to feel peace in the moment, right? So we gather all these things, we go shopping, we got this new car. We all these things. We dress up in nice clothes because we think it's going to give us something. We're not after the car, we're not after the beach house. We're not after, you know, like, the expensive clothing. We're after the feeling that we think it's going to give us. Right? Like, if I think of the beach house I one day want, one day will have. Rephrase that. One day will have. What are the reasons I want it? I mean, I imagine myself sitting on the porch overlooking the water and just sipping a coffee and just being at peace. And that's all.

That's the.

That's what I want. I mean, I can meditate, I could go out for a walk in the morning and I can achieve that same thing. It's a matter of taking the time out of my day to do that. So everything I need, everything I want is already available to me now. And it's not to say that I can't go off and do all these great things that I want to do in the future, but it affects me differently coming from this place of peace, this coming from a place of enough, and then going after it. Now I'm not going after it in a place of scarcity. Now I'm not going after it. Constantly comparing myself and thinking that I have to be or do something in order to feel worthy because I'm enough now. Can you relate? So let's stop the bullshit and let's think of everything in life your focus. It all comes down to a question on the last podcast. I said, well, if you only had one year to live, how would you live today? What things would you prioritize in your life? And when you think of how you would live today, one of the things that came up for me was, how would I appreciate today if I only had one year to live? How would I look at things differently? How would I look at the people I interacted? How would I interact different? How would I look at, you know, I might go down the street and see an ugly house because the paint's peeling off and stuff like that and be like, oh, when are they gonna paint the damn thing? But then I'll look at it now. Be like, wow, you know what? That's. I mean, look at it differently. Be like, wow, there's some character in that and life, you know, like, I could even find beauty in that if that's what I'm looking for. So the question is, what are you looking for? Because it directly is correlated to what you're gonna feel about yourself, about the world around you. That is all I wasn't even planning. I'm in the podcast studio right now and this. I've literally getting ready to pack up my bags and everything. And then I just kind of got this inspiration to record this last session. And I'm over my time here, but I hope that. I mean, I find it powerful. It really affects me because again, everything I tell you guys here, it's not because I have all the answers. It's because I want to remind you of the truth and what's really important as well as remind myself. And because by telling you this and repeating it back to you, I'm putting it deeper into my own psyche, right? And I want to let you know that you're not alone. Every, you know, everything I. When I give examples and saying like, oh, well, if you feel this, then try. This is all stuff that I'm going through. I am in no way perfect, but I try to be, not will not try. I don't aim for perfection. Well, I used to aim for perfection, but not anymore because I realized that's not really. It doesn't exist. But I'm always trying to get better and I'm always trying to put what I learn out there and to help people. Because one of the biggest pains for me is to see other people in pain. One of the hardest things for me is to see to excel and to feel like I am doing better and advancing, but then see others around me who aren't making those same strides because I want to help them. So I hope you enjoyed this quick episode. Again. It wasn't planned, but I hope I got everything, all the points across and that it was powerful for you. If you have any questions, you can send me a message. I want to know what your thoughts are. I want to know if you, if you're hearing this, if you're enjoying it, what your feedback is, you can shoot me a message at. D O n N Y R A U S S via Instagram. Again, D O N N Y R A U S via Instagram. Guys, have an amazing week. God bless you and I hope you have an amazing week and I will see you again soon.