Back to the Basics - How to Increase Momentum, Confidence, and Results in Any Area of Life.

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. Hi guys, Donnie Rouse here. And today we are going to go back to the basics. The reason why this is so important because so many of us, right, we. We're striving to go towards a goal. We have something, a vision that we want to achieve in mind. And in today's society, it's easy to get sucked into the trap of that instant gratification, meaning wanting the result without putting in the necessary work. And what I'm going to tell you today is that the work is where, really where all the juices. But in order to just to make strides and achieve whatever it is you want and get the fulfillment, all those feelings you want from it, you really do have to go back to the basics. And the reason you want to go back to the basics, one is it builds momentum, secondly, you build confidence. And thirdly, you get the results. So let's go to a area of your life, right? Think of, maybe it's like the vision you have for your health. Why is it important, right? You always start with the end in mind. And then the why is really the juice what gets you and propels you towards that vision. But then when you, once you have that now it becomes strategizing. In my course, we go through the belief system as well and the beliefs that you'd have to have in order to create that. But we're just gonna go to the strategy. So when you look at the strategy, like, I think all of us are very intelligent and we smart in the sense that we know what we have to do in order to get a result we want. And that, that knowing of what to do could literally mean talking to someone who can get us better insight and give us better clarity or more clarity on what it is that we want. So you know what it is you want to do. But then why aren't you doing it right? The some of the basics and that goes into action. But for this, for this, this episode, we are literally just going to talk about the basics. So what is it that you want? You know, why does it, you want it? And what are the steps? What are the steps? If you had a beginner's mindset, where would you start in order to get this? What you do is you write the list down and then this is where you begin chopping away and making progress towards that goal. You know, you might say, well, you know, I don't have the time to start this, and I know you could. It's easy to get into the trap of believing that you don't have time, but if you're in that space, I want you to stop incanting that, oh, I don't have the time. Because you do have the time, right? I am willing to bet, and I say this respectfully, is that you spend a lot of time cycling around thoughts that literally move you nowhere. And I say that because I've often found myself there many times. And it's not a good place to be because you spiral, spiral, spiral until there's no energy. And then all of a sudden you just kind of fizzle up and you give up saying, well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. When the truth was, it's just, you know, you were trying to jump ahead, you were trying to get the result without doing like the very, very basics and allowing yourself to build that momentum. Or you may see, well, I don't know where to start. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that all of us have the answers. We all have a general sense of what we need to do in order to get the result we want for whatever it is. It could be the vision for a category of our life, or it could literally be advancement in our career. All of us have the tools inside of us, the know how inside of the wisdom inside of us, but we. You can again fall in the trap of these encanting things that you don't know. But you, you do know, right? You know, you may not know the exact path, but you have an idea as to how you can get a little bit more clarity, right? Maybe some people you can talk to and then you could ask your good friend Google, who seems to know everything. All the answers are out there. So I want to share with you a story from this week and this. It'll really drive home the message of beginning at the basics. A while back, I had gotten certified in scuba diving and I got certified without being able to swim like how is that possible? I don't know. Well, during the certification process, they allowed me to get certified without having to actually swim. I was able to use my flippers, which, if you've ever used flippers before, especially scuba diving flippers, they're like literally two feet long. You don't have to do much work in order to be buoyant with those kind. Those types of flippers. So I completed the swimming part of the course, and then the other part was the life skills, when the life skills are where they literally. They take out your respirator underwater. And I actually had to do this again in Thailand in the ocean, which freaked me out. But literally, you had to take the respirator out of your mouth, and then you had to literally take your goggles off, put them back on, clear the mask. So get all the water out of the mask. That means you have to breathe out of your nose without the respirator, and then grab the respirator, put the respirator back in your mouth, and then give the thumbs up to your trainer, the person who's monitoring you. So I remember being in Thailand, and when I thought about this, I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I was literally crapping my pants because I had done this in a pool and I had done my certification dives, but I hadn't done it in the actual ocean. And it had been a couple years since I had done my certification, which meant I had to do a research, meaning I had to do all the life skills again in the open water. So I was with my dive master, and we're doing, you know, we're in the water and he goes, and he's pointing me for. Or she's pointing to me to like, to remove my mask. And I did. I was nervous as hell, and I pulled the mask off and then I put it back on. And for a while, I wasn't clearing the mask right, because I like my. I think my cheeks were probably puffed out, but I knew that there were. There was nowhere else to go. I had to blow out the mask. I had to force that air out of my nose to clear the mask. Otherwise I probably would have taken in water and would have been. I probably would have swallowed a bunch of water and had been rushed up to the surface. So fast forward, I'm in the pool this past week, and, yeah, actually last week, and I was doing my laps and able to do laps. I had gone from not being able to barely swim at all to. To start to be able to get like, you know, a 50 meaning like one lap there, one lap back, breathing, the correct breathing methodology, like by putting your head to the side and doing your strokes. And then I would be winded afterward. This past week, I was at the pool and I was watching these, this class going on where they were teaching grown ups and like younger teens how to swim. And I was looking at the life skills they were teaching them, and it was like, all right, well, first go, you know, just hold your breath, go underwater, see how long you go under for, come up and then do that five times. And they would slowly progress the skills with the next one being, you know, go underwater, exhale through your nose, and just see how long you can do it for. The exercise after that was then them kicking out underwater, breathing out after three seconds, turning over, and then floating on your back and kicking, and then for three seconds and stop as it progressed. Then it was breathing underwater, breathing out, adding the stroke in. So there was this progression there. And as I was looking at them go through this progression, I realized that if you were to put me in that same progression, even though I was able to do laps, if I'd have to rest, but I was able to go back and forth in the pool doing laps, chances are like, I would struggle with that, actually, to be honest with you, when I was looking at them doing that, just the act of, like staying stagnant in the water, going under and breathing out through my nose kind of made me panic. So I went over to talk to the two guys who were running the class. I said, oh, can you tell me more about, you know, the lessons? He said, well, we, we start you here, we see what your advancement is, and we just keep compounding, we keep adding these, these to, to these skill set until finally we're just working your stroke. So I was like, all right, well, you know, I took the flyer. I was like, I'm gonna really consider joining because while I'm able to do some laps, I know that the basics are some of the areas where I feel weak. And I know if I were to just to do the basics and get comfortable doing the basics, that it would improve my overall. My overall swimming. So they left. I go back the following week, yesterday, and I said, you know what, let me just work on these basics. I was about to go start just doing laps as I always have, which was easy because when you have momentum in the water, the water is kind of going down, so it's hard for water to go into your nose. You don't really have to practice the right breath work So I said, let me just go underwater. So I went underwater and tried to breathe out. And the first thing I noticed was that I was gathering water, you know, like, air in my cheeks. Like, I'd go under. All of a sudden, my cheeks would plump up, and no air would be coming out of my nose. And I'd be, like, struggling. I'm like, I can't breathe. And I would pop up to the surface. And I did that several times. And slowly, like, sometimes I would get a little bit more success being able to stay 12 seconds, you know, maybe 14 seconds. But then I noticed a pattern while I was underwater. I noticed that when I was breathing, like, if I was breathing through my mouth, right, that is the only way I could puff on my cheeks. But if I lock out that part and only allowed air to go through my nose, then all of a sudden, there is no puffing of the cheeks, and the air only has one way to go out. So I practiced that. I was like, let me just test this out. And I did that. And all of a sudden, it became very easy, and I was able to slow the cadence of my breath. And all of a sudden, I was staying under longer. And my goal during the exercise was literally just to do it for 20 seconds. I wanted to sit in the water, breathe out for 20 seconds. Mission accomplished. The next one was to practice the kicks they did. So I literally went through all the steps they did. And at first, you know, it was. I did the three seconds, then turned on my back. And it felt kind of awkward because I didn't really know if I was supposed to extend my hand out, But I continued to do it other way. Otherwise, after doing that, it became very easy to flip over my back and then go back in, flip over my back. And what I realized was that what they were doing were just kind of teaching you the stroke, like, how to, like, open up and turn for air. And then lastly, the last thing I did was, you know, I practiced with the board, like, breathing out. And then with a. One of the floating boards. I can't remember the kick boards, you know, like, using that to place my hands as I was doing my strokes. And again, slowly improving. I did that five times as well. And then finally, after I had finished all those, I was, you know what? I feel good about everything I did. And I really felt the gratification of knowing that not only did I conquer some fears, right? Like, the basic stuff I was afraid of. Of just going underwater, but after working on these skills, I clearly just. In that half an Hour I was in the pool, I saw a lot of progress being made, and I gave myself kudos for the courage to keep going, because I want to get out, be honest with you. And so when I was in a pool, I said, you know what? Screw this. Let me just do some strokes. Let me just go into the pool to see how it all comes together. So I kicked off and then I started doing the strokes. And I noticed that my breath all of a sudden was extremely easy and very calm. And I didn't have the muscle endurance yet because I haven't been swimming that long. And I'm just getting back in the pool literally in five, since five years. But I noticed the ease that the breath work, that the breath work that was going on. And it made me think about everything you want in life, right? Anything you're striving towards. And I use the example of a vision that you have for your life. And I can use something for, like, your health. Like I told you I had mentioned before, like, what is the benefit of starting at the basics? One was you start to build momentum, right? Because as I was just, in my story, as I was dunked my head under, I was breathing for 20 seconds, then I was kicking in the, you know, just kicking before turning for another 20 seconds. I was able to take each new skill and build on it and add it until. So that I was experiencing that growth. Secondly is confidence. Like, after I discovered that breathing practice, I felt really confident. Like, I slowly built up, went from like 6 seconds to maybe 7 seconds to 10 seconds. When I hit that 20, I gave myself a high five and a hug. And then all of a sudden, that confidence allowed me to move forward into the next exercise. And it compounded. And the lastly is the results, right? You see the results, the compounding effect, and that gives you again, it kind of plays in confidence, momentum, but you get more confidence, you take more action, and you get more results. So the results compound. And eventually you will get to that end, but you just have to keep building and taking a step at a time, not trying to close the gap by jumping across, because a lot of times that crevasse is a little bit too big. So look at the areas of your own life. Where do you need to go? Back to the basics. I'll give you one more very, very quick example. Let's talk about health, because I think that this is one of the plagues of society today, is that there aren't a lot of people taking care of their health. And I say that because, you know, we've become very sedentary. Sitting, I'm, you know, working on the computer. I always have to remind myself to get up, stretch, meditate, move, get outdoors. Because you're, you're sitting at a computer and it's really not good for your hips or at least you have to start to make adjustments in your exercise and your routines in order to accommodate for this new lifestyle that you're doing. So let's look at your health, right? You have this vision for your health. You can, even if you want to take a pen and paper out, I encourage you to do so. Now what is the vision for your health? Just write down a few words, how you want to feel, how you would see yourself, and then the next is, why is it important? Right? Why do you want to feel this? One of the things for me was because my body is the vessel that is going to take me around the world. Thinking about that means, like, you know what, I really got to take care of this because how else am I going to travel the world and see every single country if my body is not in top shape? And then lastly, when we go down to the strategies. All right, well, what are some of the strategies? Now you may be like, oh, well, I got to get a trainer. And you might be thinking of these big things, but the most important thing is just to start building a habit. Like if it's working out three days a week, like one of the basics would be like just going for like a five minute walk. If you've never worked out before, you know, you're, don't try to go an hour and burn yourself out and be like, you know what, I'm so sore. I never want to do this again. But go to the basics. And maybe the basics is making sure you get three liters of water a day. Making sure that you just stretch or get some movement. 10,000 steps, right? They make it so easy. You have these smartwatches which make it easy, easy to monitor and give you a measure as to what you're doing daily. Or I mean, and these are all. You could literally implement all these because they all will move the needle forward. And then if you can say if it's just energy, know that energy doesn't. It's not something you get, it's something you generate. So energy. If you want more energy, then you have to dispense more energy. Get out, move your body, let your body know that you know what, this is going to be something that I'm going to be doing on an ongoing basis. And you better Adapt, you know, and then you'll slowly will get more energy. Isn't it true that when you are like when you feel lethargic, chances are it's probably because you weren't moving very much for a while and as a result your body's like eh, well, you know what, don't feel like moving now, but when you get up and you actually move all of a sudden it awakens all these other parts of you and now as a result you get more energy. Your physiology is extremely important. So to sum it all up, what I want you to get from this episode is just to, you know, I've talked about life visioning. Like what is the grand vision, how that is a pull forward. We spoke about why and how your why is literally. That's the hook. Your why is like the hook that literally pulls you as opposed to having to be pushed in a direction and then the strategy, these are just where, how you're going to get to the results you want. And starting with the simple things. Because a lot of time common sense is not common practice. And you have to start at the basics in order to build the momentum, to build the, the foundation, in order to get to wherever it is you want, right? Because you slowly, as you start doing, you'll start adding more, you'll make adjustments, you start improving. So I encourage you to just kind of work this out through your life. I mean, at the very least by listening to this, you can just get a feel as to what you are doing, right? And where you are in a category of your life and what kind of actions you've been taking. This is not to be hard on yourself, right? This is for you to say, okay, well what have I been doing, you know, and how can I get better results? How can I do something different that's going to give me the result I want? Because you're capable, if you're anyone is capable of doing the work. It's just a matter of doing the work. You know, you're fully capable. I believe in you and I know that whatever result you want, you can get it. You just have to take the necessary steps in order to get it. That's it. So I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please leave a comment. And again, remember you guys, you only get one life. Live it. God bless you and thank you so much for tuning in.