Aligned Actions - The Only Way to TurnYour Dreams Into Reality

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise, connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company, I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life Aligned Action. Everything you want is going to require you to close a gap. Said differently, it means that you have to go from where you are to where you want to be and everything in between. There are the actions that are going to get you there. But where do people get hung up? They get hung up because one, they're not really clear about what it is that they want in the first place. And that lack of clarity, what it's doing is giving you lack of emotion. And you need the emotion because the emotion is what is going to drive you to take those actions the second place, they get stuck up. They get stuck doing things that do not matter or that do not get them progressing forward. These are a lot of the busy things that literally they take up your time. You feel good because you're like, oh my God, what a busy day. What a busy day. Oh, you. Do you think you have no time? Oh, I have no time. This is what I did. And while it's feeding our ego, it. It is really empty calories. It's like having the Frosted Flakes or like the Fruity Pebbles. It tastes good in the moment, but at the end, you feel crap. You feel worse afterward because you know that you didn't do anything to progress forward. And then the lastly is just knowing which action you need to take and being courageous in taking it. Because you get stuck in three fears, right? You get the fear of just starting and adding something new to your. To your. To your block of time, this limited block of time. You have second fear. You get fear that you may not be able to achieve it. The fear of taking the action and failing. And then the third fear is fear of the unknown. Like, well, what if I do this? And what if it's worse than where I am now? What do I do then? So as a result, you stay in this little Bubble of safety. And you feel bad until this one moment where you hit that threshold and then you start moving forward. But we want to prevent you from taking that, from hitting that threshold. Right? Because what it's wasting is your time. And your time is the one currency that you have in life, that you're equal to everybody. But it's how you use your time that is what is going to get you the most. The feelings you want, the desires you want. So I'm going to share with you a story about the realization that I had mainly with my coffee company, but really with all of my aspirations in life. Because I have a lot of aspirations. Sometimes the point where it could be to the detriment of them because there's so many things I want to go after. And you really have to. I have to select where I'm putting my actions. But I like to have. Be well rounded and think that I could do everything at once, when the truth is I could make some short. Like, I could make progress. But I got to be very selective in the actions that I take. So I was doing. I was working with my coach and we were talking about what my ambitions are, and I'm going to go into. One of my most current ambitions is to lead people in a travel group around the world, starting first in Italy, doing espresso. And with this ambition. This is the simplistic example I'm going to give you. I had this ambition, but then immediately after I had the ambition, the thought came into my mind because my friend Marissa shared with me a new venture that her daughter's going into. So I was like, oh, my God, this sounds amazing. Like, oh, I would love to do that with coffee. Take people around Italy, Vietnam, Korea. Oh, my gosh, imagine that. And I started to go into this fantasy. And there I was, like, all of a sudden, like, my whole demeanor changed. Like, I was excited again because I was connected to that vision. The day after, I was thinking about it, and I started to kind of come down from that high that I was feeling, and I was like, oh, man, but how the hell do I do that? Like, how do I go about doing that? And what I wasn't doing was I wasn't looking at. I knew what actions were going to get there, right? I knew, easy, one way to do it is just to contact this company that is doing the travel. But, you know, and then I was refraining from doing that because I'm like, oh, but I don't have the. I don't have the social media followers. And I Was giving myself bullshit stories as to why I couldn't change, just start making moves. But I knew what the next action was. I was on the call with my coach and I was sharing with her. I was like, what this aspiration? She goes, great, well, what do you do next? And before she even had to ask that question, I was like, you know what? Fuck, let me just go on there, email them. So I started that process and now I have to create this. I have to fill out this survey, and then I have to get 150 people engaged in this idea, and then I move on to the next step. The reason I tell you this was because, well, why didn't I start that process, right? Because there was fears there. I was like, oh, but I don't have the social media. I have to wait until this. Before I could do that. I was like, no bullshit. Like, everybody loves coffee. Everyone. Like, I can't think of a person. Well, most people in my life love coffee, right? Who wouldn't be like, who wouldn't want to go on a trip to Italy to taste espresso with an espresso smile and have an experience like that? I know I would, right? There's no one offers it, so I want to be the first. And so I knew, like, there was a fear there that it wasn't going to be enough, that if I did it, it was going to work out or that I might get rejected and that they were going to tell me, like, you know what? Sorry, it's not going to work out. And then I'd be like, oh, well, now what do I do? Then I would feel like I failed, but I took the progress and now it's actually what was going on my mind did not happen. I actually got a completely different result. And it came from taking courageous action, seeing the fears, and then taking action in spite of them. I'll give you one more example now. So in my cold room and espresso, I've been doing this, my coffee beverage, for literally almost 15 years now. And while I will give myself the grace of saying that I have taken a lot of steps, I have moved forward, and everything has really been according to God's plan in the sense that I've progressed in my understanding and things that were I once learned and touched upon a decade ago are also now coming back into my life and giving me this new clarity. But the new clarity that I really got was realizing that anything I wanted, right, If I. The aspirations I have, and I'll share them here with you because I think the best, one of the best way that you can move forward in aspiration is to proclaim it. So my goal is to sell cold Roman for $300 million, which involves having a multiplier of anywhere around 2 12% or I mean, sorry, 12 to 17 times, which roughly means rallying maybe 20 million in revenue for a beverage. Seems like a lot, right? But I don't believe that it's out of the. It's. It's outside the realm of possibility because I know that the, the coffee is that good. But I had this clear aspiration as to what is it that I want as well as why do I want it, right? I think, all right, well, why do I want that? Well, because I want to be able to. To, you know, to build this idea that I have. I want to be able to give to my family. I want to be able to, you know, be financially free to engage in other pursuits, to do other projects. It just opened up possibility, right? I wanted freedom. And then when I was looking at the actions, like, well, where, where was I getting stuck, right? I looked at the actions. I'm like, all this busy work, like in a weeks can. Years can pass by, right? Years can pass by. And I'm like, what? Oh, shit, man. I' love all doing my markets. I love seeing the people, but I'm like, man, another one. It felt like my life was on just on replay. Someone was just pressing the button and rewinding at the beginning and pressing a button year after year after year. But then I looked at the tasks. I said, well, what am I doing and what needs to be done? What are the important tasks that are going to close this gap and get me moving forward? And I clearly looked at it mean, like I could get lost in the busyness of like, doing the markets. But the truth of the matter is when I look at those actions of like, everything that has to go into one, me brewing the product so I have product to sell, and then two, doing these markets, doing deliveries, right? That all has to get done. I could, you know, whether I'm productive in a week or not, it's getting done, so I don't have to waste much time. But what I was doing was I was satisfying the ego and giving myself this story, like, oh, I'm so busy that I can't do anything. And what it was, it was at the cost of my dreams. And so then the next step for me was to start taking the action. What actions are going to close that gap and move me forward? A lot of these were Moving forward with contacting Food Venture Labs and getting these, and getting tests done and getting these, these studies done on my products. So this way, once the studies were done, I knew exactly how I needed to move forward with the scaling of the production. Because without their sign of approval, without knowing all the safety things that have to go into place, then there's no way to go right. I can't contact the equipment manufacturer because they need specs to go off of. So that, that was the next step. But what was holding me back, it was what I had mentioned before. So the fear, one of the biggest fears that I had overcome was I was fears I was afraid of losing my freedom, losing my time. And the funny thing about fears is that the fears you have, often the fears you have are what are keeping you locked into that place that you are that you don't want to be. So as a result of not taking the actions, what it was literally was keeping me in this space for like I'm going to say a decade, but for a long time where it was just self became self fulfilling. So that was the fear. And the fear was like, well, what if they give me an answer that I don't like, right? And they tell me that oh I can't, I can do a certain process or the life of it's not going to be as long as I want it. So I was fearing the unknown. And then, but once I got clear about what I want, once I was became really well acquainted with the ambition I have, my desire, my vision, my purpose, whatever you want to call it, then all of a sudden what action needs do I need to take to get me there? I mean it became clear, right? The, the next step became crystal clear. I got to contact the Food Venture lab. And I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that there wasn't some where I feel like divine guidance. When I was in Miami, Florida, I had prayed. I just finished like an event on my birthday. I was like, and I was just sitting there praying. I was like, I need guidance. I was like, God, just give me guidance. Let me know what step to take next. That evening, 11 o', clock, one of my friends texts me out of nowhere and says, you need to contact Cornell. Contact them. And then literally sends me the website, sends me the, the phone numbers and everything. I was like, well that was freaking random. Like where the hell that come from? All right. I was like, that's the sign. Like immediately I'm like, that's the sign. Like months later I, I contacted my Friend. I was like, remember when you sent me that? She's like, yeah, I remember. I was like, why did you send that to me? She's like, I don't know. I just, I don't even know. So which goes believe. Like I believe that angels are working through people, through the people in your life. You are always being guided. So that was a long way of just long winded way of just going out and saying that I knew what action I needed to take and then I took it. And so now as a result of taking that action, it opened up now like there's a, there's all of these other questions that need to be asked and solved and. But I believe that, you know, and I'll tell you one other story, but I believe that these are all meant to move you forward like a problem or like success, failure, problem, no problem. They're all meant to move you forward if you are willing to look into them and heed their guidance. So I submitted the product and I got feedback from it and I got a whole new understanding and education on packaged like on bottled beverages. One that I didn't know before. Thankfully I was, I was abiding by these, these set of principles, but it just made me more aware now. And when I go to the scaling of this process, I know even more of how to make sure that the, the proper controls are in place. And I know the knowledge I'm going to get on the next set of tests is going to be a hundred times even more because I mean there, there are these tests that I have to get done that only certain labs in the US and but once I have that material then it's, it's off to the races and it's gonna be require even bigger action and it's gonna require even more courage. So what I'm trying to say is I want you to just be real with yourself, right? Like I don't want you to go through freaking years of doing the same shit over and only to realize that you literally wasted time. Well, you, you know, we have this optimistic view on things where we don't necessarily like, well, it wasn't really a waste of time and I don't think it is a waste of time but it, you know, because you, you will be learning something along the way. But if you could like condense time so that it takes less, wouldn't that be worthwhile? Like doesn't that free you up to do so many other things so know which actions need to be taken and, and take the things that are going to move you in that direction. And I think in closing, I want you to understand that life is not a linear line, right? If someone were to like my business, for example, I could stress myself out beyond beliefs. It's like, oh, my God, I'm here. I want to be there. What the fuck? Why is it taking so long, right? And beating myself up and being hard on myself for the process and not thinking that I'm further along, but when in reality, this is just the process, right? And it's funny because when I hear, when I've heard stories about entrepreneurs who would start a business and you don't hear of like, the, the success, it's like, oh, they started the business. And then year, year number two, they were nationwide. I mean, there are those, those, those anomalies. But I recall more stories where they're like, oh, yeah, you know, they started this 20 years ago in the garage and they did all these things, and all of a sudden there was. There's a tipping point where all of a sudden things clicked. They did one thing differently, and all of a sudden the thing took off. So realize that life, it's not this linear line, but it's literally like this yarn ball all, like, wound up. And be okay with that because every step along the way, it is guiding you. Without going off on a different tangent, My, my, My cousin who's getting married had actually said this to me, and it was a, it was a big. It just, I brought it to my business, but I also made it me think about love relationships he was talking about. He was, he's been with his fiance now for. They've been dating for eight years and now they're engaged. And he was saying how like he, the relationship came at a time where he wasn't even looking for a relationship. It was at a very, a turning point in his life. And then it just kind of happened. They started dating. And then through, you know, all of the things that were going on in their life, through the hard times, the good times, the hard times, he realized that she was someone that he could count on and vice versa. And the relationship started to grow and it was just easy. It flowed. And so he said, you know, he said, well, you know, it just, you know, it just, it was natural for, for me to want to marry this girl. It made me think about my business as well as relationships because I could sometimes second guess things like, oh, well, is it me? Should I be doing this different story altogether, but as it relates to my business? Because I was just telling you the Story about my business. It helped me think of those hard times, but how I always pulled through, as well as the lessons that they had given me, both about myself as well as the clarity it gave me with. With my business and how it's just like, keep moving forward, keep trusting the process, because life is not, you know, a lot of people, I feel like, especially in relationships, things get hard, they abandon, right? In my business, things get hard. I kept the course. And as a result of it, that's why I've healed, like, such a strong bond with it. And I want to continue to move forward because it's taken. So I've put so much energy into it that I want to see it fly on its own. So, long story short, let's bring it all back and say, well, you want to make strides towards your ambition. Like, what do you do? Know what your ambition is? Like, what is it that you want? Get really clear about that. And the best way to do that is just to monitor those feelings. When you get that rush of excitement, that rush of passion, capture it, know what it is. So this way, when you go back and you have to account for it, you know what modalities you. Maybe you were visualizing, maybe you were hearing the crowds calling your name, Whatever it is, capture that. And then look at where you're spending your time. Like, where are you wasting your time? Where are you doing shit that does not matter? Be honest with yourself. And then the last part is to get real, Say, okay, well, this is what I want. What are the specific actions that are going to start moving me in that direction? It's going to be scary. I promise you it's going to be scary. But once you start taking those actions, it's gonna be freaking exciting. You're gonna feel alive. And this is where the juice of going after our ambitions are. You're gonna feel alive taking the action. So take courageous action. Know that it's likely gonna be a shit show. It's usually always a shit show when you start out, but just keep taking the actions because life is a gift. Life is a blessing. Life is finite, right? No one, not a single one of us is guaranteed. So move towards the things you want and just enjoy the process. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I hope it helped realign and help you just look at your day to be, okay, well, where am I wasting time? And how can I take back my time so I could start putting it into the things that matter to me? So that is it. I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you. So, so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. Hope it helped you align with the things you want, as well as to shed some of those things that aren't giving you the satisfaction fulfillment that you that you deserve. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to me via my website@www.donnierous.com. again d o n n y r a us.com there you could also sign up for our mailing list and sign up for the waiting list for our One Life Blueprint which is going to be launching this September. So that is all I've got for you guys today. Thank you so so much for tuning in. Remember, you only get one life lifoly. Live passionately and most of all, live now. God bless you guys and I will see you again soon.