Answer of The Day

Hi guys. My name is Donnie Roust and you are listening to the podcast One Life. So since I started this new year, it's been more of a journey of self discovery in the sense that creating a vision for my life that I'm excited about, one that I am proud of because I really do believe down to my core, is that we were all born to live lives that we love. In the process of this visualization, I was writing down the things I want for my life in the different areas, focusing on five different areas. I think it was relationships, my health, my company, or my business with the other two, my relationships with those around me and my emotions. And as I was going through each category and I was writing out what I wanted the category with the idea of visualizing what it would feel like after I've achieved these ideal conditions in these categories in my life. And while I was going through it, I was realizing that a lot of the things that I was looking to feel, looking to do, looking to experience as a result of achieving a certain body type or a certain level of health, all these things were things that I could experience now, today. So they had no weight with what was supposed to happen in the future. And what it made me realize was that we hold ourselves back from experiencing a happier, more fulfilling life because we think we have to validate, we think we have to become something first. And that couldn't be any further off than the truth because we were made and born worthy the way we are. And we have to accept life as a journey. Life as a journey of constant growth, constant building and getting to that point. And I feel like I know what I found for myself in the past is that I was using all external stimuli to validate myself. And that was anyone doing that. It's a very harsh blow on self esteem. So where does it all come down to? You could have your projections for the future, but where is the power? Where is the magic? The magic is in the present moment. The magic is your day, the things that you do day to day. And while that might sound, it might sound like I'm representing that in a positive way, but I'm actually talking about the negative side of it. So the day to day, that's where you're getting, that's where you get hung up in life. And I'll explain it in a second. But when you think of the emotions, the reason you are who you are because of the environment around you. I was listening to an audio by Joe Dispenza and he was explaining how the mind worked. And he said, your personality is a result of your personal reality and that the brain is nothing more than just a record of the past. And looking at it this way, you look at the experiences you've had, and you have these emotional patterns that you experience day in, day out. I've noticed from my own life that there are many emotions that I experience throughout the day that literally seem to kind of snowball and replicate. It's almost like I'm living a Groundhog Day. And the problem with this is that by experiencing these things over and over and over, these negative emotions is that we start to incorporate them into our body. The mind leads the body to a certain point, and all of a sudden, now the body leads the mind. When you've created all these neural pathways, now the physiology that you're in dictates what goes through in your mind. I was doing an exercise on my own about the mind chatter, the things that goes through our mind day in and day out. Because when we hear this mind chatter going on, this is the conditioning that he was talking about in his video. This is that repetitive. Those. The past, the mind of the past, living that past. Because we experience these things in our head. For example, say you're going to a store and you see something that you want, but you say, you know what? That is too expensive. Or you kind of cringe inside because you say, you don't have the money. I know this is something that I did, but yet spend thousands on trips that I go anywhere, but I might look at one small product and then say, oh, I don't have the money. So I created this scarcity in my mind. And the idea behind this is to recognize the power that is in that language. Because language has such a power over our lives. It is hypnotizing. Tony Robbins, in his world, he uses the term incantation. And when you think of what exactly is an incantation? An incantation is the retelling of a phrase or a spell. And by not being conscious of the words that we say to ourselves in our mind, what we're doing is we're keeping ourselves in this spell. So an exercise you guys could try, and this is something I've been doing, was whenever I would have this kind of. This mind chatter, rather than just kind of let it go on in my mind and say, you know what? This will work itself out. I know it's not true. I know it's just my mind, because that really doesn't work. I instead said, you know what? Let me write this down. Let me do three things. Let me first write down what is happening around me while this internal thought is going on. Secondly, let me write down what that internal voice is saying to me. And thirdly, let me replace that mind chatter, that phrase, whatever it is that my mind's saying with something positive. As I was doing this, it was something that had to do with scarcity. I was looking at a pair of headphones, and while I'm looking online for these headphones, I heard my mind coming, oh, no, I can't spend that much for these headphones. And I noticed it happened several other times in my day. Another time I was buying pens, a certain type of pen that I really enjoy writing with, and I noticed this over and over. So I wrote them down and then I said, what is the thought that comes and the thought was, is that there's scarcity. I don't have the money. Was really the words in my head were, I don't have the money. And then I went to the positive, saying that money is always flowing to me. It's funny because you get in this habit of scarcity, this habit of having a scarce mindset. It can change when you say your business starts doing well, and all of a sudden now you have the means to purchase these things that you once had. But if that climate changes, if that financial climate changes, you'll go right back to it. And it's important to understand that life is cyclical and you have to keep that positive thought, because as long as you keep that negative, that negative thought in the mind, you're just going to repeat more of that negative, you're going to repeat more of those things that you're trying to push away from and less of what you're trying to attract. In the course of doing this, I actually came across another lesson that I wasn't anticipating, and that is mirroring or. And not so much mirroring, but projecting. See, a lot of the time, at least I've noticed in my own experiences, we project onto other people. We project what we've denied in ourselves as well as what we see in ourselves through others. Let me give you an example. I was driving down the street and I was looking at a small business that is owned by a family friend of ours. And the business hasn't been doing that well for a while. As I was looking at this business, I started to feel empathy and feel bad for this business. At first, the way I was looking at it, I was asking myself, why am I looking at this business and why do I feel bad for it? The first answer that came to my mind was, oh, because they're not doing that much business, it struggled. And I said, let me look in the mirror. What is going on in my life that I could. That I'm looking at this business and I'm judging because maybe they're doing good. I have no idea what's going on with their financials, what their current business is like, what is going on in my life that I'm reflecting. And then I realized for me, business has been a struggle. For me, it's been tough trying to push forward, not knowing which way to go. So I was projecting what I was feeling internally on the proprietors of this business. Now let's reflect and well, not reflect, let's switch to a different mode. So something that we've. When we're. When you use that judging mechanism to see something that we denied in ourselves. And I would. I don't remember the exact context, but it's happened frequently. So I could generalize and just put it out there where someone might be standing up and making. Has presence, either with coffee or whatever their business, whatever it may be. So someone may be standing up there and confident in putting a product out. And there was a part of me that's denied this for myself, maybe saying that it's not good enough, or I hold myself back because I don't know how I would be portrayed if I step out and I take the spotlight. So there's a part of me that would resent the person who was doing that, saying, oh, they're just trying to show off or whatever it may be, kind of like pushing it off on their ego, when the truth is that I denied that for myself and that's why I had that judgment towards them. So seeing it is extremely powerful because not only do you stop judging them, but you start to take responsibility for your own actions. And then. So that was kind of how you can navigate some of that internal dialogue, that internal chatter that's going on in your life. But let's talk about beliefs for a second. Because what it really comes down to, like what we just spoke about, about the mind being a record of the past, it all comes down to beliefs, right? Beliefs are our blueprint. Beliefs are the way we see the world. They are the lens in which we see the world. So the question then becomes, how do you become aware of your beliefs? And then how do you change your beliefs? One thing I have the privilege of seeing as a result of having a couple nieces and nephew was to see how my parents are around Them as well as to be conscious of the language that happens in and around the family, around my friends. And this language could be seen. Thoughts around money, about scarcity of money, how difficult it is, thoughts about people with money. I'm using this because this is probably one of the things that's on the forefront of my mind and what I found from doing this exercise. So let me explain the exercise first. So the exercise is, we all have these beliefs. Sometimes we're not even aware of them. But if you look at a category of your life and you ask yourself a simple question like, what would I have to believe in order to have my life this way? More often than not, you're going to come up with those beliefs, because those are your beliefs. You're coming up with them asking this question, those are your beliefs. So it's kind of like a, like a mind hack. And then looking at these beliefs and some of you say, you know what one that we've probably all heard is, money doesn't grow in trees. Or that the people who have wealth, how to do something crooked or how to cheat to get there. And you write down all these beliefs on a piece of paper and then in another column, side by side, you start to question them. So think of beliefs as a table constructed of scrap wood. That scrap wood is held together by, you know, the table is held together by four legs. And that table represents our belief. What we have to do. The questioning of that belief is like taking an axe and chopping away at each leg and so it becomes unstable and collapses. I went through this exercise. I did my beliefs around money, some of my beliefs around self worth, my beliefs around my own business, my coffee and the validity of it in the marketplace. What I found 100% of the time, no bullshit, 100% of the time was that all the beliefs, all the stories that I was telling myself in my mind were completely false. Take the one that all people or people with money are crooked. If you take that belief and say, well, is this true? And if something's true, it has to be true 100% of the time, right? Because beliefs are, we're taking that as absolute truths, not as well. Yeah, sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. That's. No. A belief is an absolute. You say, I am firm. I believe that this is the way it is. So you look at that and you question it in an absolute way. So, well, is this true? Is this true all the time? Do I know people who oppose this belief? And then as you start to break down this belief and ask different questions. What you start to realize was that the belief was just bullshit. But why couldn't you see this before? This belief has been going over and over, replaying in your mind. Why couldn't you notice it? Was it because you never believed in the first place? Or what was the reason? The reason was it is extremely difficult to do anything in our mind. We have to put it down on paper. Only when we put it down on paper can we see it, dissect it, and create that new belief or expose that belief for what it really is. Bullshit. I remember doing this and the evening I did that, I felt this extreme high, this extreme sense of relief, this openness in my chest. Like I literally felt like I was on top of the world. Because every time a thought would come in, I just kept writing it down on paper, then disproving it. Thought would come in, writing it down on paper, disproving it. And I remember just realizing I've been holding myself captive. I have been holding myself prisoner in the prison that I constructed in my own mind. And as a result of doing that exercise, all of a sudden when I was walking around talking to different people, I noticed that my physiology had changed. I was standing straighter, my shoulders were back. It was in a very powerful physiology. And I felt confident as all. Hello. That is the power coming to realize what your beliefs can have on you. They can let you shed all that baggage that you've been holding onto to expose that real you. I gave you guys a couple exercises. I hope you found this informative. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I encourage you to do both of those exercises that I described. Reese, I'll say them again just to, you know, just to clarify and make it clear as to what you have to do. The first exercise was those thoughts in your mind. A lot of the times those thoughts might be beliefs as well. So it's kind of like a double whammy. So when you have take a piece of paper, separate it into three. First column, you write down the belief, what that or the thought that's going through your head, that negative thought. Middle column, what you do is you write down what exactly is going on in that moment. So if it is looking at a pair of headphones you want to purchase, write that down. And the reason why we're writing that down in that middle column is because these things aren't accidental. These things aren't one times or one offs. More often than not, if we're experiencing in that moment, when similar moments arise, we're going to experience that same reaction, that same emotion, that same feeling. And then the last column, I want you to replace that thought or that feeling or that belief with something positive, something that feels good. And it could be something as saying, I choose to feel love for myself or something positive or money is coming to me in all different ways. You're creating a new belief, a new affirmation that opposes that. And why do we do that? We do that because words are power. Words carry emotion. Anything you have, words carry that emotion. You could have a word that is a softener as well as a word that is amplifier, right? So if I say you're wrong, that has a certain emotional impact on you versus if I said, you know what, you're mistaken, Right? You feel the difference there. So that is the power words have. So have fun. Play with that. And then the second exercise on beliefs, I want you to observe the beliefs, do an exercise, sit down for a few ten minutes, write down the beliefs you have around the different areas of your life. About money, about physical health, all the different areas. And then in the column next to it, you question that belief. Say, is this true? Are other people doing this? Is this true? Is this an absolute truth? And just start to chop away and break away that belief. And then what you'll realize is that there comes a point where you know what, this is not true. I don't know why I came up with this belief. And you realize that you have to take some personal responsibility. And sometimes it's not even that big of a step. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I was streaming it via Facebook, but something happened to my connection and it didn't work. But I'm still recording here, so I hope you guys enjoy this, if you enjoyed it. If you think that other people may benefit from seeing this, I encourage you to share it. You can shoot me a message if you have any questions. You can feel free to shoot me a message via Instagram at donnY-O-N-N y Rouse r a u s.com or you can friend me on Facebook D o n n y r a u s space in between and become friends. I'd love to hear your experiences. And that concludes this episode. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. God bless.