At The Edge

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse, and you're listening to the podcast One Life at the Edge. How far does it have to go before you're willing to make a change? When is enough enough? Most people don't change until they hit a threshold, until they can't go on any further. Sometimes it's a positive change. Other times it might be something negative. But the point of this podcast here is to help you to identify. Okay, where am I right now? Where am I standing? How does it feel where I am? And how much more suffering, how much more pain do I have to endure before I'm willing to make the change, to do what's right for me, to do what my heart is calling me to do. It's my hopes. By the end of this podcast, you will actually shorten that. You will shrink that time it takes for you to act this way. You can make the decision sooner rather than put it off, where you have to hit that emotional threshold, because we don't have to go through the pain, right? You don't have to go through all that intense motion in order to get what you want. 2006, I was living in Rome, Italy, and I was traveling around. I had been in Rome for about, I think about two months, and the last segment of my trip, I was going to move around Italy. One of the trips I went to was in Capri. So I was in Capri, sitting on the beach. And one of the most amazing things that I remember distinctively about Capri is as you're sitting on the beach, the waves would roll in and it would push these rocks. It wasn't so much of a sandy beach, but had, like, the rocks on the beach. And as the tide would pull back, you would just hear this tumbling of rocks. It was such a unique sound that it still stands with me today. While I was there, I met a guy who was sitting on a towel maybe a few feet away. His name was Michael. Michael was telling me his story about his life and how we ended up coming to Italy. He started when he was living in New York City. He was trading. I believe it was bonds. He was doing extremely well, but he was unhappy. He was fed up with life. And he had kept going and going and going until finally he hit a threshold. He said, it's either two options. He gave himself two options. He goes, either one, I take my life, or two, I leave this job. I pack only what I could hold on my back, and I take my bike and I go to Portugal and I bike through Europe. I guess Because I'm telling you the story. You know, what his option was. So he's telling me how he flew into Portugal, assembled his bike, and he started biking through the country. And as he made his way down into France, he was telling me how he was sleeping in vineyards. He would pitch this little tent in the vineyards, and he would get up before whoever was working the land, before they would get up. He would have everything packed up, and he would get back on his bike, and then he would start going, and he came all the way down into Italy. And that is where I met him. I met him at Capri. We kept in touch for a little while after that. Like, years later, he was telling me how I remember him being somewhere teaching English. And then sometime after that, being that I worked in coffee, he had contacted me because he said, hey, I'm starting this coffee business. I was wondering if you could help me out, if I could bounce some ideas off you. And I obliged, of course. And that was history. So I just actually reached out to him again. But I thought, how important is this story? Because so many people, they wait until they hit that threshold where all the warning signs are, the alarms are sounding, right? Everything same. Do something different. Get out of this place. This doesn't feel good. But yet you stay there. You stay there and stay there and stay there until the pain gets too intense. Until emotionally you can't take anymore. In which case then you let it go. But it doesn't have to be that way. All it takes is seeing a brighter future and knowing that something better is available to you. This gentleman here, Michael, I haven't spoken to him in probably. If I had to say, I'd probably say at least maybe 10 years. But from the last conversation we had, I know he was doing a lot of traveling and he was actually happy where he was. I don't know if he still has the coffee business. I actually just sent him an email to ask him, see how everything was going. But that is the type of thing that happens once you expand your eyes and you can see beyond your current mindset. We tend to. I mean, we're all guilty of this, right? And until we get out, we don't know what else is out there. We have this fixed mindset that this is how it's going to be and this is how it's going to remain until you hit that wall. And it's funny because you can't see. You keep hitting your head against the wall and you end up with bruises all over the place. But if you could Only see what was past the wall. You see something so much greater. And that wall is just the feature. Fear of change. Now, naturally, I'd love to just promote traveling because travel is one of those things that will expand your mind. It'll show you that there's so much more to life than you know here in the present, right? Because think about it, people live differently when you're here, when you're in, when you're just doing the day to day routine, you are around. People who are like you tend to think that that's how life is until you step out. When you see that there's so many options, you see that the experiences you have, you realize, well, you know, there's so much more to just working to buy the car, get the house, buy that new shirt that I want. And you start to value things differently. Now all of a sudden it becomes about the experience. You want to start stacking up experiences rather than material possessions. So I like to apply to travel because I think travel is one of the things that will change your life instantly. As long as you allow to. You can't go somewhere and be like, okay, I'm going to go travel to Italy, but I'm going to stay in the hotel room for the entire week. But at least I can take a picture of my coffee cup that the hotel concierge delivers to me to say I'm in Italy. No, you got to go out and you have to experience, you have to engage with life. That is what's going to open your eyes, that's going to give you that expansion. All of a sudden you'll be hopping from country to country every single year. You'll end up taking several weeks off because you know how valu the experiences is and how much it adds to your life. If you have any kind of aspiration for doing a trip abroad, if you've never done it all, if you have any kind of aspiration, I highly encourage you do it. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you're missing. But I promise you, it's an experience that you will never regret for your entire life. Even if you have to give up a lot of things in order to make it happen. There was a podcast I'd done in the past. You can go back and check it out. It was called Cozy Prisons. It was about a girl I met who wanted to travel but never took the action because she wasn't willing to give up where she was. Some things that she had and the irony and all is that she wasn't happy where she was, but she was stuck. Where are you? So if you are stuck in that place where you just, you know, you want to make the decision, but you just don't know how, you don't know. You don't know exactly what it is you want, you're fearful of it, or you just don't know how, we don't have the right strategy to do it. Reach out to me via Instagram. I'll gladly point you in the right direction. My Instagram is Donny D O N N Y R A U S. But before we even go there, let's start with that homework assignment, as I always leave you. What is that threshold? So, taking the example I just gave you, what is it? What is that in your life? What part of that life is it for you? Maybe it's your physical health where you notice that you're getting, you know, you used to have a six pack and now you just have a keg, right? And you're hitting that threshold where you're like, well, yeah, I'm kind of getting used to this. But then all of a sudden, you know, you have a physical appointment coming up next week and you're feeling a little bit anxious because, you know, he might not have something good to tell me after the blood work I get done. But let's bring it a little bit like more of a pop spin. Let's bring it back to the travel thing. Let's bring it back to the things you want to experience in life. Where do you want to go? What do you want to see? What do you want to experience? If you need some help, Kind of thinking of some stuff. How about swinging with penguins in South Africa? How about hang gliding off the. I think it's called the Coronado in Brazil. And seeing all the people at the beaches in Ipanema and Copacabana. How about hiking up to Mount Everest's base camp? There's so many experiences out there, but you don't know. If you don't know. That should be another podcast. So where's that threshold? What is it that's really kind of bugging you where you feel this unease in your life, where you know a change is necessary? What is the change that you have to make that you've been putting off next? What is it costing you by staying where you are? We tend to think that if we're staying in one place, we don't make any decision. Well, things are not going to get worse. But that's a false belief. Because things get worse. If you're not growing, you're dying. If you're not growing, you're shrinking. And then lastly, let's shed some light. Let's illuminate a little bit. What is the best that could happen as a result of making that change. And I firmly believe that as long as you're making a change that's aligned with your heart, as long as you're taking action forward, you can take new action, you can correct the action, but you're going in the right direction, things are only going to get better. That is all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, number two of the day. Although I'm not going to release it at the same time, but I felt inspired to share this message with you, to share the story, because I want you to know that you don't have to wait until you hit that emotional threshold. Learn from the story I just told you. So this way you can take, you can consolidate, like the time, compress the time and experience the things you want to experience. God bless, guys. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and I will see you again soon.